Begin the Begin

I like to think about the wine I'm drinking. I also like to think that doing so keeps me out of rehab. Given the alcoholism in my family, I shouldn't be so flip. But I do think that the cerebral potential inherent in enjoying wine can be a self-reflexive safeguard against abuse. But maybe I'm kidding myself? Time will tell. Perhaps this is less about fun things to do with wine, learning about terroir and polyphenols, and is, actually, a count down to my intervention. Again, time will tell.

But in the meantime, I propose to use this space to document the wanker experiments that I always seem to be running. These experiments -- and I use the term loosely -- range from the practical to the esoteric. They can be conservationist ("Is preserving an open bottle with inert gas worth the hassle?"). They can be educational ("What can we learn from a side-by-side tasting of neighboring vineyards?"). They can be absurd justifications for drinking on a Sunday morning ("What wine pairs with eggs?"). Whatever they may be, this space will serve as the chronicle of these experimental efforts.

(A note on the photo: this was a spectacular bottle of 1985 Confuron-Cotetidot Clos de Vougeot that we picked up from Philippe Renaud at his shop in Beaune, Mon Millésime, during a recent trip to Burgundy. It was while drinking it that I pitched the idea for this blog to my wife and insisted that it would require a new wine storage fridge for the garage.)