Salud! And a few more of my favorite toasts

Cheers!

Salud!

Bottoms up!

Those are just a few of the common clicking phrases before enjoying a nice glass of wine. Ad you raise your glass this evening with friends and family, I thought I'd throw a few more your way:

Stems up! (refers to the stem on the wine glass - similar to Bottoms up!)

Skol! (the Swedish version of Salud!)

Prost! (German version of Salud)

If you feel that you must embellish with words, try some of these:

To wine-those plump grapes' immortal juice
That does this happiness produce.

To grape expectations.

It is well to remember that there are five reasons for drinking: the arrival of a friend; one's present or future thirst; the excellence of the wine; or any other reason.
-- Latin saying

“My grandmother is eighty and still doesn't need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.”
- Henny Youngman

To alcohol: the cause of, and solution to all the world's problems.

Here's to the floor, who will hold you when no one else will.

Beer is made by men. Wine by God. - Martin Luther


Visit my Traveling Vineyard site at http://www.travelingvineyard.com/guide/morethanatasting to browse our great selection of offerings, start an exciting new career, or contact me to book a tasting in your home and try before you buy!

5 Awesome DIY Wine Tasting Themes

1)      Single winery

Pick your favorite winery (Rosemount? Robert Mondavi? Duckhorn? Cakebread? Yellow Tail?) and try a variety of their wines.

2)      Single grape varietal

Try 6 different Cabernet Sauvignons from around the world. Or 5 worldly Syrahs and Shirazs and see which ones you like the best!

3)      Specific price range

Have everyone bring a wine that cost less than $8. Or have everyone bring a $25 bottle. Set your price and find a favorite!

4)      Specified region

Go for all French wines. Or all wines from Napa Valley. Or try just Spanish reds. Enjoy!

5)      Same wine, different years

Harder than all of the other tasting themes, this one requires that you find a wine from each year. Think you can find a Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from the same winery from 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012? The hunt might be more fun than the tasting! Good luck!


Visit my Traveling Vineyard site at http://www.travelingvineyard.com/guide/morethanatasting to browse our great selection of offerings, start an exciting new career, or contact me to book a tasting in your home and try before you buy!

Featured Wine Tasting Theme: Couples Tasting

Valentine's Day is merely a month away and you might be planning a night out with your loved one. Ever have trouble agreeing on a bottle of wine to split?

Before you spend big money on a bottle you don't BOTH love, set up a couples tasting party!

Let a professional wine educator guide you through an array of fine wines so you can find a wine style that you both enjoy. And share the fun with other couples so they're not caught up the same dilemma on Valentine's Day!

Visit my Traveling Vineyard site at http://www.travelingvineyard.com/guide/morethanatasting to browse our great selection of offerings, start an exciting new career, or contact me to book a tasting in your home and try before you buy!

The 5 S’s of Wine Tasting

1) See

Like a diamond, we’re looking at color and clarity when we look at our wines. You can tell a lot from the color. Tilt the wine in your glass to a 45 degree angle. If you are peering at a light yellow, almost sunshiny white, it’s probably a Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc. If it’s more of a buttery, even brownish yellow, it could be a very oaky Chardonnay. It’s it a purple-y red wine, it’s likely Merlot, and if it’s a bright classic red, you might have a beautiful blend in your glass. 

Now, you probably know what wine you just poured, so you don’t need to see the color of it to know what you’re about to drink. But clarity is an important reason to really “see” your wine. Notice that tiny clear ring where the wine touches the glass? That’s called the lens. You want to make sure that is crystal clear. With the exception of really aged reds, a clear lens is important to the quality of a wine. If you see a murky lens or no lens at all, taste with caution. It might have gone bad.

2) Swirl

More than just something to do to keep you from making eye contact with other people at a party, swirling the wine in your glass actually aerates the wine. You’re letting more wine touch oxygen which dissipates the alcohol smell and enhances the flavor of the wine. The technical term for this is “volatizing the esters.”

3) Smell

Now that your esters are volatized, get your nose in there and give it a good sniff. No REALLY breathe in the aromas, the bouquet, the nose of the wine. 80% of taste is smell, so this process allows you prepare your tastebuds for the delicious flavors that are about to pour across them.

4) Sip

Okay, you’ve been patient enough. Sip that wine! Swishing it around in  your mouth just a little allows the wine to touch all the parts of your tongue. No. You don’t have to do this. But it is kinda fun to try.

5) Savor

I like this 5^th one… it really means drink more!

Shall I add a 6^th S? Salud!!

Visit my Traveling Vineyard site at http://www.travelingvineyard.com/guide/morethanatasting to browse our great selection of offerings, start an exciting new career, or contact me to book a tasting in your home and try before you buy!

Got a new year's resolution to find a new job?

Join my team!

Traveling Vineyard is the most amazing job you could ever imagine! Learn to be a wine educator and
offer in-home tastings. Simply offering two tastings a week can earn you up to $1000 a month!

Launch your career and take advantage of our business-building kit, which includes all the tools you need to succeed. You'll get wine notes, wine tasting glasses, marketing materials, and credits for 2 tasting sets to run your first two events.

Start exploring on our website, then give me a shout. I'll give you all the details and help you launch your wine career!

Liz

Visit my Traveling Vineyard site at http://www.travelingvineyard.com/guide/morethanatasting to browse our great selection of offerings, start an exciting new career, or contact me to book a tasting in your home and try before you buy!

5 Reasons to Become a Wine Guide with Traveling Vineyard

1)      You love drinking wine

Seriously. Not exactly a high barrier to entry here.

2)      Earning money (and free wine) sounds good

In my first 45 days as a wine consultant, I had offered 4 tastings, earned a commission check of over $250, and received over $500 in free wine!

3)      You need an escape (either weekly or for a week!)

If you need a hobby to get you out of the house a night or two each week (or maybe just once a month!), offering wine tastings is amazing – it’s like getting paid to go to happy hour! Want a different kind of escape? How about a free vacation? Travleing Vineyard offers qualified consultants an all-expense-paid incentive trip… and you can even earn a spot for your significant other to join you!

4)      You want to change lives

Everybody has their “why.” Whether it’s to supplement their income, pay for college, have a legal reason to make that trip to Napa tax-deductible, or just getting a 20% discount on all of their wine purchases, by building a team of wine consultants, you are touching the lives of great people. You can be the reason they succeed and help them live their “why”

5)      You want to change your life

Live your own “Why”. Make money. Set your own schedule. Work from home. Supplement your income. Quit that other job. Escape from everyday life. Whatever the reason, Traveling Vineyard can change your life. 

Intrigued? 
Visit my Traveling Vineyard site at http://www.travelingvineyard.com/guide/morethanatasting to browse our great selection of offerings, explore a rewarding career, or contact me to book a tasting in your home and try before you buy!

6 Tips for Preparing your Sparkling Wine

1)      Know what you’re buying

Sparkling wines range from sweet to dry. When you buy a bottle, make sure you understand the flavor differences of a brut, extra-dry, demi-secco, and doux, and purchase according to your taste preferences.

2)      Get the right foods (sweet, salty, spicy)

Strawberries, caviar, spicy eggrolls, and creamy chocolate lava cake: these are just a few options that pair amazingly well with different types of sparkling wines. Here are some fun pairings to try:

• Brut with vegetable tempura or triple cream brie or potato chips
• Extra-Dry with beignets or spicy shrimp
• Demi-Sec with bleu cheese or prosciutto and melon or foie gras
• Doux with strawberries and dark chocolate

3)      Get the temperature right

Sparklings should be served super-cold. Right out of the refrigerator at about 45 degrees is the ideal temperature. Keep it in a bucket of ice if you plan to consume it over time.

4)      Pick your glass

The classic flat champagne glass allows the bubbles to tickle your nose (and is rumored to have been shaped on the breast of Marie Antoinette!). But if you prefer to watch the bubbles be beautiful strings of bubbles, go for a champagne flute (the tall, skinny tulip-shaped glass). Of course, if you have neither, do what the professional wine reviewers do and drink it from a regular old wine glass.

5)      Know how to open the bottle

Oh, the pomp and circumstance of opening a bottle of bubbly!

First, the foil. You’ll find 4 or 5 little sideways folds. Unfold them. If there is no sticker holding it down, you can easily slide the foil covering off the top at this point (if there is a sticker, you might need to use a fingernail to cut the foil.

Next, the cage. Keep a hand on the top of the cork as you untwist the cage. If the pressure is too great, that cork will shoot right out! Remove the cage from the bottle.

Now for the big event: If you’re celebrating, you probably want to hear it go POP! But if you’re just drinking it, it’s actually preferable to the wine that you merely hear a light hiss (also known as an angel’s kiss!). To get the cork out, hold the cork with one hand, and the bottle with the other. Twist the BOTTLE, not the cork. As soon as you feel the cork moving, Push it back in toward the bottle with reverse pressure, only letting it creep out of the bottle ever-so-slowly. Whether it pops or kisses, you can now pour!

6)      Got leftovers? (Tip: try not to...)

If you have one of those lovely champagne savers, go for it. It will preserve the fizz a little bit. If you don’t, never fear! You actually don’t need to cover your sparkling wine at all. Just sit it straight in the fridge. You can cork it with a stopper, or just put some cling wrap and a rubber band over it. It may go flat, but the wine will not go bad for 3-5 days. Old wives tales suggest that you can also drop a silver spoon (stem into the bottle) into the top to keep those bubbles bubbling for another day, but food scientists have proven this to be bogus.  

Stems up!

Liz

Visit my Traveling Vineyard site at http://www.travelingvineyard.com/guide/morethanatasting to browse our great selection of holiday offerings, or contact me to book a tasting in your home and try before you buy!