Happy Drinking!

We returned from our Argentine Adventure one month ago today. It was beyond amazing. There was a lot of eating and a lot of wine,  and I will start sharing it all with you very soon.

Wall of wine. We were 9 people travelling together and we took down a lot of wine.

I started my journey with International Culinary Center's new sommelier program the second I got back --- literally. After 29 hours of travelling I showered, changed, and headed straight back to school.  I’m a volunteer intern, which means I help set up and clean up, but that’s a small price to pay to get to learn all about wine. Plus, hopefully, at the end I will come out with the first two levels of sommelier certification.  (However, I’m not counting my chickens just yet. I need to pass the tests first and I’m a little worried about the service portion. Current and former servers, tips are very, very welcome!)

I am absolutely loving it.  I think I love wine a little more everyday. However, there is A LOT to learn.  We were on France for the last two weeks and my head was kind of spinning trying to cram in the Grand Crus of Burgundy and the Great Chateaux of Bordeaux. It's intense. 

I find it fascinating and there is so much to know, however, I really can’t blog about this class as I could about culinary school. We’re really not supposed to and it probably wouldn’t make for very interesting reading anyways.

What I can do is share some good wines with you. We get to try some very good wines and frankly, I think my palate is starting to get spoiled. So, I’ve just started posting a wine of the day on my Instagram feed under NibblingGypsy, which you can also see on the Facebook page.   Some wines will be from class and some from home, since there is a lot more of that going on since drinking wine is homework now.  So rough, I know!  The first two wines are both nicely priced as well as being delicious. 

I’m also very slowly adding tasting notes to Vincellar.com. You can find me under the name SippingGypsy.  I’m hoping all of this will help me solidify these wines in my head, and maybe I can help you all discover some good wines as well. 

I’d love for you all to share some good wines with me too! 

No makeup, completely messy hair, but very happy with my glass of malbec by the pool in Mendoza.

For those wanting to learn more about wine, here are a couple of book recommendations:

This is a great introduction with a lot of helpful, practical information. It's straight to the point. My brother gave me a copy for x-mas a couple of years ago and he should be happy to know that is finally getting a lot of use.

Once you want to graduate to something more in depth, I'm finding this book extremely useful. It makes a lot dense information graspable and easy to read. 

I'm sure I'll share more books with you soon. My wine book library is growing much faster than I can read.