My Wine Education

Cincinnati Wine Events: 5/18 - 5/24

It's time for our weekly event listing. This weekend is Festival Weekend, in the big leadup to Memorial Day. If you want wine, your best bet is to attend one of these events.

• West Chester Wine Festival, Friday (tonight!) and Saturday at VOA Park
• Northern Ky Wine Festival at the Alexandria Fairgrounds in Alexandria, KY. This festival is closer, and better, than you think. We'll be there, and hope to see you there too. You can read more about the festival here.
  
• Fleur des Fetes in Dayton. It's not cheap, but the money goes to a good cause and you get to try some great wines and food. You can read more about the Fleur des Fetes here.

Also of note - The Liquor Cabinet in Hebron is having a special Australian Adventure night on Thursday, complete with wine, food, and a guest speaker. Cost is $20 and you need to make sure you RSVP by Monday. It sounds like fun!

Tuesday is election day in many places. In Kentucky, we're doing something about the governor situation. Because of that, liquor stores won't open until 6 pm.

As usual, it's a big list, so we've compiled it on one page for your reading pleasure. (For information on Dayton, you can refer to Mark's blog at Uncorked.) If you know of tastings or events that we missed in the Cincinnati area, please email us and we’ll add it to the list.

You may note that the tastings in KY are mostly free, and the tastings in Ohio charge at least .25. It's illegal for a retailer to give alcohol away in Ohio, so they charge you, but many times it's a nominal fee.

Tell them we sent you, and happy tasting!

Follow the "Continue reading" jump at the bottom for Friday, 5/18 - Thursday, 5/24 tastings. Upcoming events that require reservations or attracted my attention are listed at the end.

Friday Interactive Wine Tasting Map

Saturday Interactive Wine Tasting Map

 Download 0518.pdf
(An easy-to-print PDF of all the events in this blog post)

You can also click the map icons in the detailed listings to view the maps.

Cheers!

Building Local Wine Trails

We're asking for your help!

Last week we posted our Northern Kentucky Wine Trail of retailer tastings as well as a map of Cincinnati-area wineries. Friday, we posted two interactive Google maps of the most common retailer tastings from our weekly event listings.

Google MyMaps allows you to save your interactive map and share it with others. Here's what we want you do:

1. Play around with Google MyMaps and create your own wine trail in the local area. (We're open to Cincinnati and Dayton area wine trails.)
   
2. Submit the URL to me.

I'll put them all together in a series of links on a constantly updated page, easily accessible from a link in the sidebar of this site. Basically, we'll end up with a compendium of local wine trails. You can already see the link on the left hand side - it's right there near the top.

Thanks for your participation!

Cincinnati Area Wine Maps

Send us your own Cincinnati-area or Dayton wine trail, using Google MyMaps, and we'll add it to the list!

Area Wineries
Wineries within an easy drive of the Cincinnati metropolitan area.

Friday Night Wine Tastings
These are the retailers that show up the most on our weekly event list. Keep in mind that they may not offer tastings every Friday night. Always check the event list first.

Saturday Night Wine Tastings
These are the retailers that show up the most on our weekly event list. Keep in mind that they may not offer tastings every Friday night. Always check the event list first.

Kevin & Shel's Northern Ky Wine Trail (Friday Nights)
This is where you can usually find us after work on Friday nights.

Regular Dayton Tastings
Might as well throw in the excellent offerings of our neighbors to the north!

 

Cincinnati Area Wineries

There are a lot of wineries within an hour's drive of the Cincinnati area. In fact, I came up with 14 of them today. Many of these wineries specialize in vinifera (as opposed to other fruit) and have brought back numerous awards from international and domestic wine festivals. Don't you think it's time you went to visit?

An interactive Google Map is available here.
Let me know if I missed any local wineries and I'll add them.

Notice a lot of Google Maps popping up on this blog? It's only the beginning. We've got a great idea using all these maps and we'll unveil it on Monday morning.

Our Friday Evening Wine Trail

Most Fridays, we attend several of the free retailer tastings in the area. I pick Kevin up from work, downtown, and we head out. Lately, a lot of our friends have been shocked and amazed that we can find wine tastings every Friday night. (People, read the blog! It's all there, every Friday morning!) We take what we affectionately call the Northern Ky Wine Trail. I assume there is a similar trail, or two, or three, on the Ohio side of the river, but we haven't searched for it yet. (If you know of one, post it in the comments below.) Our trail is after the jump ...