artist: Michael Longo, source: Provencal Village

An article in Australia’s Gourment Magazine has had me craving French wine and cheese like crazy. Not to mention a vacation to Burgundy! ahhh  Anyways, thanks to international shipping, fabulous wines from all around the world are easily accessible.

I was lucky enough to go to the Hunter Wine Region, Australia and do a day of wine tasting.  Unfortunately, the adventure wasn’t properly documented (for obvious reasons).  I do have some old pics from Kate and my Italian wine tasting excursions…  :P  Here is some internet education on wine tasting and cheese pairing.  Cheers!

Source: Cheers via chilloutpoint

source: I Love Lucy

source: britishblogs.co.uk

photography: Donald Gruener

photography: Donald Gruener

photography: Donald Gruener

source: dailymail.co.uk, Burgundy Destination Guide

Source: Toogood Wine Cave, Flickr

Wine Regions of the World, source: google

source: Livermore Heritage

Tuscan Wine Tour

Tuscan Wine Region

^red wine explained

^white wine explained (double click on video to open in new window if you want to learn more about each from this woman’s youtube videos – I think they are alright!)

^Pairing wine and cheese

I picked this QA because it is the PERFECT example of Aussie Humour! :)

A Toast to your good drinking

RoveDaily’s etiquette expert, Terri Psiakis, charges her glass and looks like she means it.

Dear Terri,

A few of my mates and I were having a discussion and one of them said that it’s proper etiquette to always look someone in the eye when you do a “cheers” with them. Is this true or was he making this up?

Tom, Gladstone QLD Dear Tom,

This is quite possibly one of the deepest etiquette questions of all time. A “cheers” is a very sacred thing. When you “cheers someone”, you’re drinking to their health. If you don’t make full eye contact with them they might think you’re being rude. Unless of course you’re cock-eyed, in which case your drinking partner should probably be drinking to your health instead.

So a “cheers” is a good wish from you to another person, and as with all the sentiments you really mean, you should look the person in the eye when you say it. Unless of course they’re cock-eyed, in which case choosing which eye to direct the sentiment to can be difficult and fraught with uncertainty. I often find that looking at the space between the middle of the eyebrows is handy in such circumstances. Unless of course the person appears to have some sort of third-eye shenanigans going on, in which case you should probably have a look at how long and how much you’ve been drinking.

Someone once told me that not looking people in the eye when you “cheers” them means you’ll be cursed with bad sex for life. At the time I thought that sounded about as plausible as those chain emails that say if you don’t forward the letter to ten people immediately, bad things will happen to you. So for a while I stopped looking people in the eye during “cheers”, just to see what would happen.

The bad sex curse never appeared, mainly due to the fact that when I stopped looking people in the eye while we drank, they stopped thinking I was up for it. So ‘bad sex’ quickly became ‘no sex’. Which is another reason for maintaining eye contact. And remember: cyclops are not only the easiest people to “cheers” with, but everyone I know says they really put out. Enjoy.

^of course some AbFab (best show that my mom was into in the 90s) drunk wine tasting for fun