The Hundred Mile Wine Diet

I was recently reading about the benefits of drinking red wine. I really like red wine. I went out and bought some. Normally, I just buy California red wines because I'm loyal to the wine country. I lived in Sonoma County for a big chunk of my life. I went to high school in Sebastopol. I have to admit, when I first landed here in Wisconsin and heard they had wine, I said something like,

"Pshaw. Okay. Whatever."

And didn't give much thought to it since. I've never questioned Wisconsin's beers, mind you (well, okay, "Milwaukee's Best") but wine is another story.

There are many stages one goes through when one becomes an ex-Northern Californian. I won't go into it all, but one of them definitely has to do with overcoming your inner wine snob.

Here is a picture of the local wine I chose to try:



Maybe it's not quite clear in the picture, but the type of wine is called, "red". Not Merlot or Zin, not Syrah, not Cabernet Souvignon or Malbec or... you get the picture. IT'S FREAKIN RED! That's what we know about it. It's red.

A real Californian (read: Cellar Door 15 years ago) might be given this wine as a gift and say to herself, let's keep it for five years and see if it turns into a nice vinegar, and then we can clean the windows with it...

But, see, this is where the recovery part comes in. So I, as a *recovering Californian, actually bought the wine and drank it. And it was good! Really good! It was very sweet. Tasting of plums, mostly. Not hinting at a flavor of plums, but really just tasting all out like ripe plums, in spite of being a grape wine. I'd buy it again.



*You never completely recover from being a Californian. You always are one, for better or worse.

P.S. Californians are wonderful people! I love quite a few of them.