remember the wine after the bottle – make wine memories

saving your wine memories

There are many ways to keep a token of a favorite or memorable wine long after the bottle is empty. Here are two ideas that are simple and cost effective!

the wine journal

We’ve all seen the little journals at our local wine shops, stationary shops, and online that conjure up images of us sipping wine and jotting down astute notes of our impressions, color, acidity, aromas, flavors, body… I have bought or received several of these over the years and they laid empty and dusty in a drawer or on a shelf.

Every time I tried to make an entry in one of these little notebooks I decided against it for one reason or another. Mostly, I felt completely daunted by getting my tasting wrong. I’m not a wine professional or studying wines in any systematic way to care about writing down my impressions about a wine. Why do I even care to jot down notes from a wine I may never taste again? When will I ever care to review my tasting notes? What if someone found it, read it and thought I was an idiot (aka ‘imposter syndrome‘)? I am a researcher and former academic, by trade. These fears are real!

make it your own…

And then I had an epiphany! Why not take one these journals and make it a wine diary where I can record the wines we enjoyed when celebrating our family milestones or record what we were doing when we tried an exceptional wine! I’ve collected memories of wines from our first wine tour as a married couple to Temecula Valley, CA; wines we’ve shared with friends; wines we’ve commemorated new jobs, new homes, or the loss of a pet with.

I found this great leather-bound journal where I can remove the labels from the memorable wines we’ve enjoyed and save them in my journal where I write about what we were doing while we were drinking it. There are various ways to remove wine labels, very well written up by KnowWines.com; however, my preferred method is using wine label lift stickers that adhere to the bottle’s label and then remove the label leaving a sticky edge which can be cut down to fit into the journal. This method isn’t always full-proof as some labels tear beyond salvation, leaving us to forlornly throw the bottle, label, and sticker into the trash. However, they generally do the trick and in 2-3 minutes you’ve carefully removed the label and stuck it nicely into your wine diary.*

Once I have my lovely label adhered to my journal, I fill in the details surrounding the experience. Some of my entries are focused on what what going on when we chose the bottle, other times I focused on the food pairing and how it went with the wine. Regardless, I’ve let myself off the hook for having to write up a systematic, well thought-through wine tasting notes and allowed myself to simply relish in the moment of the wine!

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Saving the corks

Another way that Erich and I remember great wines is collecting the corks. There are so many creative ways to display your cork collection nowadays! You can purchase a container to them them in or find fun craft ideas like wreaths, frames, home decor!

While I do try my hand at crafts, our corks generally sit on display. I try to look for non-traditional vessels to fill. For instance, I found a wooden lobster trap at a furniture store in Rhode Island. A friend of ours gave us an antique American flag and we stuck it in along with a bottle of 1990 Perrier-Jouet Fleur de Champagne – still unopened! The look is elegant and reminds us not only of the great wines we’ve enjoyed over the years, but also of our time living in Rhode Island.

Our latest cork vessel is large glass vase that matches the color of our living room decor (not the the picture below really illustrates the point). However, its elegant, out of the way, and should take a few years to fill! The only issue with this cork saving solution, is that we can’t really see individual corks for wines that are particularly meaningful to us. For instance, in 2019 we lost our two cats, Panda and Olive, and beloved German Shorthaired Pointer, Kelsie, in the span of six months. Each time we opened a wine we had been saving for something special. On each cork we wrote their name and the date we said good-bye. If you look closely at the first picture of the lobster cage you can see them at the front. Luckily, there’s still enough room in there to add more corks when the time comes.

Whatever you choose to do, there is a great option of everyone! Google and Pinterest will be all too glad to help you find ideas.

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Today’s wine memory – happy birthday to my dad!

Today is my dad’s birthday!! To celebrate, Erich and I are opening up a beautiful wine I’ve chosen to observe the occasion… even though my dad is hundreds of miles away.

My dad is one of the most fascinating people I have ever had the opportunity to meet and I am so lucky to call him MY dad (although I share him with my awesome sister)!

He is always up for adventure, never shies aways from a challenge, and is an unwavering optimist. Always choosing the path less traveled to seek out a better life for himself, his wife and kids, and most recently for his young grandkids. He instilled, in my sister and I, a serious work-ethic, a life-long passion for learning, and an insatiable desire for travel. Nothing gets anyone in our family talking like a conversation centered around plans for an upcoming trip, whether or not we’re all going. I’ve lost count of the number of countries my dad has visited or worked in. He is truly one of my greatest inspirations every day!

This year I am choosing to celebrate my dad with the 2017 Wanderer Series Rhone Blend from William Chris Vineyards in Hye, Texas. Everything about this wine to me embodies my dad. The name ‘wanderer’ captures who he is at heart. Exploring the world or wandering away to take a photo of something that caught his eye, there is no better word to describe him. They are both blends. The wine a blend of grapes. My dad a blend of cultures – growing up through his early adulthood in Poland and then immigrating with his young family and adopting the US as his home. And just like my dad, this wine is FANTASTIC!

william chris vineyards wanderer series rhone blend

Those who know my husband and I, know we are huge fans of William Chris Vineyards’ wines. The newest release of the Wanderer Series is a real gem! The Wanderer Series is a proprietary William Chris label which they bottle blends they’re experimenting with. The 2017 Rhone blend, is made up of grapes native to the Rhone Valley in France, Carignan, Cinsault, and Mourvèdre. Each of these grapes has also been sourced from different vineyards, which adds another dimension to the blend. William Chris wines tend to be terroir-specific, meaning they produce vineyard-specific varietals highlighting the areas the grapes are grown.

This wine is a beautiful medium-ruby dry wine. It has medium-high acidity, low tannins, medium-full body, and a long creamy finish. On the nose, the Cinsault brings aromas of right red fruit, red raspberry and red currant, while the Carignan and Mourvèdre provide subtle spice notes.** On the palate the same red fruit bursts in your mouth like a Gushers candy (are those still a thing?). The spices also peak out a little more with black pepper from the Mourvèdre being more apparent. The influence of (likely) some degree of oak aging in neutral oak becomes apparent, with a touch of creme brûlée toasted sugar crust on the tip of your tongue.

Overall, the Wanderer is a great wine! It was only released a few weeks ago, and we’ve already enjoyed several of them, and plan to order more. Of course, we’ll be putting the Wanderer label into our journal after we finish it! If you’re interested, check out on the William Chris Vineyards website.

a few of dad’s adventures!

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* After applying the label removal sheet, use a spoon to firmly affix it to the entire label. Leave the label lifting sheet on the bottle overnight. This strategy is the most successful to ensure the glues firmly affix to the label as you peel it off.

** Let the wine sit a few minutes, or decant, to give it a good dose of air. Drinking the wine out of the bottle the aromas hold tight. This may give you the impression that there isn’t anything interesting going on, which couldn’t be more wrong.

*** This post was not sponsored by and is not affiliated with William Chris Vineyards, Wine Enthusiast, or KnowWines.com.