Green Beer Today - Green Wine Tomorrow

Happy St. Patrick's day to all my Irish friends and those Irish for today. Of course today we think of drinking Guiness, Harp, and green beer. But there is also such a thing as "Green Wine" - Vinho Verde, which translates to green wine. This light, crisp, slightly fizzy white wine from Portugal is perfect for the upcoming Spring and Summer months as it is quite refreshing (and very affordable!)There's a handful of producers out there - I prefer Alianca Vinho Verde which is like Spring in a bottle.

Cheers! and may the luck of the Irish be with you all year long.

It's Tourney Time - and Time for Local Wineries!

It's March Madness Baby!! Kansas City is hosting the Big XII tournament this weekend. Do all the states represented in the Big XII have wineries? Yes, and here's a little quiz - what are the top 3 states in the Big XII with the most wineries?

What's the score?
1st-Texas is on top with 181 wineries
2nd-3rd Missouri & Colorado tied with 94
4th-Iowa has 74
5th-Nebraska 32
6th-Oklahoma 22
7th-Kansas 21 - but is on top with it's 2 teams in today's final game!
Congrats to my KU & KSU friends!

These numbers were found on websites from each states' wine producer boards, associations, etc. including these nice sites:
Go Texan Wine.org
Missouri Wine.org plus here's a hipper, affiliated site Norton Says.com
and Colorado Wine.com which has a really neat map feature that can be found on the page that lists the wineries.

You don't have to go all the way to California to visit great wineries and taste wine near the source. There's so many close to home - and with all the information on the web, very easy to find.

Weekend Food/Snack and Wine Pairing

The Oscars are this Sunday night and once again I think I've seen maybe one of the movies nominated for Best Picture - The Blind Side. With the number of nominations in this category raised to 10 this year, my chances of having seen any of the films was increased dramatically.

If you're watching the ceremonies at home, here's a little food (or should I say snack?) pairing to help get you through the approximately 3 hour telecast. What's the most popular movie theatre snack? Popcorn of course!! And since they usually don't serve wine or beer at your local AMC Theatres, here's your chance to experience one of my (and I've heard several other wine people out there say that they also love it) favorite match-ups - yes, popcorn and wine! Just about anything you have on hand will do since the flavor of your basic popcorn is pretty simple. If you have the butter flavored microwave kind, Chardonnay works well.

Enjoy and just think of all the money you're saving by not having to pay $7 for a ticket and $5 for a tub of popcorn - plus you don't have to turn your cell phone off and you can talk away all you like.

The Wine Mom - This Week's Wednesday Website/Blog

Here's a nice little blog that I came across the other day Mother of The Vine by The Wine Mom. A combination of wine reviews and information, plus advice and tips on parenting, etc. I'm going to check-out some of her older posts and hopefully she'll have more new posts coming-up.

Spring Resolutions

Being March 1, 2010, and despite colder than usual temperatures in Kansas City, Spring will begin later this month. I was thinking (yes, scary thought) that Spring is a much better time to make resolutions for the up-coming year than on New Year's Day. January is the middle of winter and you're worn-out from the Holidays. In March, temps are warming-up, days are getting longer and Spring is around the corner. So, March 1st is not only a great opportunity to re-visit resolutions you made back in January, but also a chance to make some new ones as we head into warmer weather, bluer skies, opening day at the ballpark, etc. - a feeling of re-birth if you will. Get the much greener, sun-filled, picture full of hope and optimism? Great! Let's get started with some food and wine resolutions that make sense:
~ Try new wines from new regions, both white and red. See past posts for ideas.
~ Discover new, often easy recipes online. Google anything that you can think of. Try "fish tacos", "beef short ribs","garlic mashed potatoes", etc. Add specific words, methods, or ingredients like "easy", "crock pot", "lemon pepper", "baked", "BBQ", etc. Or look in your pantry, look in the freezer, look in your spice cabinet, combine, then Google. I came-up with "ginger tomatoes chicken breasts". I only got about 581,000 results.
~ Recycle. If you live in the Kansas City area you have access to curbside pick-up (except glass) so check out Ripple Glass for locations to drop-off those empty bottles from all those new wines you'll be trying. For outside Kansas City, to find recycling information check out Earth911.com

Cheers and good luck with your Spring resolutions!