Confessions of an Undercover Geek

Yesterday I made a quick trip to the Target mega-store in Fairfax, Virginia to pick up a few things. Much to my surprise, Target Stores now sell wine. It was half an aisle in this really nicely displayed case. The prices were decent. Its super convenient. Now while you’re at Target picking up a dress shirt and light bulbs, you can also pick up you’re favorite bottle of merlot.

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Tonight I spend the night at home with my parents. We watched the Spike Lee movie Inside Man and drank a bottle of Good Harbor Cherry Wine.Â

It is a great movie and let me say a good bottle of wine. The wine is brewed right here in Michigan in the Leelanau Peninsula. It is also made with Michigan Cherries. Mmmm  I haven’t had too many fruit wines before. It was good This one was pretty sweet too.

I know when I was in New York we had the Finger Lakes right there. There was more great wine there then you knew what to do with. We had the Casa Larga Vineyards like 25 minutes away from RIT.

What is good Michigan wine? While I am here in Michigan, what do I have to try? Anybody want to do a Michigan Winery tour?

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Last night I was hanging out with some friends here in Lansing. I had brought a bottle of wine but Nate did not have a cork screw. I could have very easily gone back to my house and gotten one but the challenge was could we take the cork out with a power tool.

We tried just about everything. Finally we settled on using the power drill. He found a large bit. He drilled partially into the cork and pulled. The cork just popped out.

Moral of the story: The next time you are at a friends house with a bottle of wine but without a cork screw, just go to the garage and find a power drill.

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The famed web designer Dan Cederholm and his merry band of brethren from the design company Simple Bits have just released the web site Cork’d. It is a web site where you can review and share what wines you have been drinking.

After taking classes about wine and reading about wine, I feel I am a newbie connoisseur of wine. The web site Cork’d immediately appealed to me.

On the site, you have wine journal. There you can write about the wines you have drank if they are not already in the system or add reviews to wines that are already there. You can see what wines your friends have been drinking and send each other recommendations. You can also make yourself a shopping list for the next time you go to the wine store.

Another neat feature is that you can give the wine “tasting tags.” Yes my friends, social tagging (folksonomy) has made its way into the wine world. You tag your wines with your taste descriptor words. This makes it fun and interesting to search for other wines. So if you really want a wine with a strawberry taste to it you can click on it.

The design of Cork’d is also really really nice. It is a very simple site. There isn’t a lot going on in the page. It also has a very classy feel to it.

Overall I really like Cork’d. I think it really fills the needs of drinking a bottle of wine a couple weeks ago and wanting to remember what it is. If you put it all in your wine journal then you’ll always have it. You will also be able to share that info with friends. I have a ton of friends I will be sharing this site with.

If you want to see what wine I have been drinking, here is my Cork’d profile.

If you are also a beer connoisseur, like me, you can check out BeerAdvocate.com. I have to say though that it is no way as cool as Cork’d. It has a nicer feel to it.

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One of the guys, that helped to organize the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition, asked my wine professor if some of her students wanted to accompany some of their judges on a tour of some of the New York Finger Lakes Wineries.

My friend Phil and I of course said yes and immediately signed up for the field trip.

We went to Herron Hill Winery and the Dr. Konstantin Frank Winery. They were both awesome.

I had never been to the Finger Lake area of New York. It is gorgeous. There are all these rolling hills, vineyards, lakes, and small towns. I could totally see myself getting a cabin down there. Sometimes I wish that I had a weekend place I could escape to and allow my brain to relax.

Also, we visited Camp Good Days & Special Times. The procedes from the wine competition went to benefit the camp. The camp helps kids with aids. It is a gorgeous camp. They do really awesome work.

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My awesome wine professor, Lorraine, has gotten me and some of my fellow students into a wine competition tomorrow. We will sit as amateurs on a panel. It will be awesome. I can imagine I will have some fun stories after tomorrow.

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Attention all!! Even if you are not a wine drinker, you should go out to your local wine store and pick up a bottle of Beaujolais nouveau wine. Every third Thursday in November the Beaujolais district in France can release their wine for that year. That day is today.

I had forgotten that that was today. I went to the store to pick up a bottle of wine to take home to my parents for Thanksgiving and was happily surprised. I picked up a bottle.

The Beaujolais nouveau wine is not very heavy. It is more of a fruity fun wine. Even if you are not a wine drinker, go pick up a bottle and try it. It is very good.

Even though I do enjoy beer, I also enjoy a good wine now and then. It was a gorgeous day and my buddy Brian and I went out to the Casa Larga Vineyards for the Purple Foot Festival. I enjoyed it quite a bit. We took a tour of the vineyard and then got to do a tasting. I would highly recommend their ice wine.