While National Rose Day is the second Saturday of the month of June, National Pink Day is June 23. It’s also Pink Flamingo Day!
Seriously though, National Pink Day is a day set aside to celebrate all things pink:
to wear pink, to enjoy foods and beverages that are pink, and to give a donation to any of the charities that use the color pink. Use #NationalPinkDay in social media. You even listen to “Pretty in Pink”!
In particular, the color pink and the pink ribbon is associated with breast cancer; when you wear pink today, who do you wear it for? Who are you remembering or honoring?
As Wine Predators, we should toast those who have battled breast cancer too.
With ROSE of course!
But which one?
How about one made by women? One that’s estate grown and sustainably farmed?
Today is the United Nation’s International Yoga Day! Have you seen this video of how to drink wine while doing yoga? It’s a fun one!
I started doing yoga when I was in college at UC Santa Cruz, but I didn’t get into it until I had a serious rock climbing accident where I fell 15′ onto my back and my chiropractor was my yoga teacher. Later, when I moved back to Ventura, my teachers kept asking me to sub; one of the first classes i subbed was a Patagonia where I had two students: Yvon and Malinda Chouinard! When I learned one of my favorite Yoga Journal writers, Erich Schiffmann, was doing a 40 hour teacher training in Santa Barbara, I figured it was time to take the plunge. A few years later, I followed that up with Iyengar teacher training with Bryan Legere who I studied with for 15 years. These days, I mostly have my own practice, attend classes, and do the occasional subbing.
As a yoga practitioner I definitely DO NOT recommend doing yoga while drinking or after drinking! Do yoga then drink wine!
— Gwendolyn Alley, Art and Wine Predator (@ArtPredator) June 21, 2016
During your yoga practice today, you should definitely do a few sun salutations (because solstice!) and in recognition that, like the sun, you ROSE off the ground for those sun salutes, the obvious wine to choose is ROSE! For International Yoga Day, you might want to try Continue reading →
Recently, for nine weeks, Que Syrah Sue and I learned all about Albarino from Rias Baixas in Galicia just north of Portugal in the western and northernmost reaches of Spain during an online weekly educational program using the hashtag #WineStudio as discussed in “April Fools for Albarino.”
As you can see from the list below, we tasted more than a case of Rias Baixas Albarino. In this blog post, I am going to share a few highlights from each night to pique your curiosity.
We really went all out on what wines to pair with these Rias Baixas Albarino! In general, foods that pair well with Sauvignon blanc pair well with Albarino.
While most of the wines we tasted over the nine weeks were 100% Albarino, a few were Albarino blends. As they all came from the same region, Rias Baixas, the tasting was organized by various themes, listed with the wines below. On many of the evenings, not everyone received all of the same wines being discussed, and that made it a bit more chaotic than usual. We definitely prefer it when we are all tasting the same wines at the same time and in the same order to have a better conversation about the wine.
Overall it was an amazing experience and we came away with a love for Albarino from Rias Baixas, Spain!
— Gwendolyn Alley, Art and Wine Predator (@ArtPredator) April 12, 2016
There were so many wines in this two month period that at one point I used sticky notes to keep track of which wine to drink when! Above are the first group of wines we tasted in April and below the second group of wines that we tasted in May.
Whether you are a red wine fan or a white wine fan, whether you are an adventurous wine drinker or a more traditional one, a visit to Santa Barbara County’s tercero in Los Olivos is well worth a trip just off the main drag (2445 Alamo Pintado Ave, suite 104).
At the end of our late February visit, Que Syrah Sue bought seven bottles of tercero and I bought six. We were both tempted to buy more and we both look forward to going back. And here’s why:
tercero owner and winemaker Larry Schaffer has a wonderful philosophy and personality, and we appreciate his approach to wine to really showcase the fruit and not mask it with oak. We appreciate his playfulness and willingness to take chances with and play which is refreshing in a wine industry that can be so pretentious.
While February’s Santa Barbara Love #winestudio introduced Que Syrah Sue to Larry Schaffer and his Tercero wines, I met Larry in July of 2014 when he hosted a bunch of us wine bloggers at his tasting room in Los Olivos (2445 Alamo Pentad Ave) before the Wine Bloggers Conference in Santa Ynez.
And we all left with half a case or more of tercero wine!
Why? Specializing in Rhone wines, tercero is not only off the beaten track in Los Olivos but he offers Rhone wines that are also off the beaten track.
March is Women’s History Month in the United States, and yesterday, Tuesday March 8 was International Women’s Day,
…so we thought March would be an appropriate time to take notice of not only some of the women wine makers we admire but also a few wine bloggers as well.
Starting with Kimberly Smith, wine maker at La Montagne, who says,
“May each sip bring your joy!”
— Gwendolyn Alley, Art and Wine Predator (@ArtPredator) November 28, 2015
So I must apologize for my absence here on Wine Predator. You see, I broke my wrist. My left wrist. At Thanksgiving. At a parking lot at Mammoth Mountain. I slipped on some black ice in my ski boots and went down HARD.
Which meant that during the final three weeks of the semester at Ventura College and three weeks of winter break I had a broken wrist.
— Gwendolyn Alley, Art and Wine Predator (@ArtPredator) December 11, 2015
Which meant that I couldn’t even open a bottle of wine. Unless it had a screwtop. And fortunately for me, I had a few from Tercero to enjoy, like this grenache on Dec. 21 for winter solstice:
— Gwendolyn Alley, Art and Wine Predator (@ArtPredator) December 22, 2015
Which meant that while I could lift a wine glass with my right arm, and get people to help with notes, and participate in plenty of twitter tastings, Continue reading →
…so we thought March would be an appropriate time to take notice of not only some of the women wine makers we admire but also a few wine bloggers as well.
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 