365 Wines in 365 Days .. How is it REALLY going?

Booze muffin tops, upset winemakers and the question is: can I do it?

So we are over halfway through the year (as of Monday the 1st of July midday) and I’m over halfway through my aim to try 365 DIFFERENT wines this year. I thought it was about time I gave you all the lowdown on how it’s going: my struggles, an answer to the ‘will i make it’ question, my accidentally getting in trouble with winemakers.. All the behind the scenes juicy goss!

I love when I mention my 2013 wine crusade to people – they sort of open their eyes really wide and then make some joke about using it as an excuse to be inherently pi**ed all the time. If only life was that good!

Let me be clear on this point, I’m not drinking a bottle of wine everyday! My aim is merely to try 365 different wines over the year and by try it means a sip or glass not a full bottle (only on the odd occasion!). There are educational purposes to this challenge, check out what these are here.

I worded it as “365 wines in 2013” instead of “A wine a day in 2013” as I realised it simply wasn’t feasible to drink everyday. Purely because people get sick.. And when you’re puking your ring out even wine obsessed lovers like myself don’t feel like wine. Fact!

Secondly I’m not drinking 365 bottles. Wine is a social occasion, I do encourage sharing. Plus, not to mention that is something like 219,000 calories over the year approximately (on average a bottle of wine contains 600cal) and considering I’m not one of those lucky peeps who never puts on weight, I seriously cant do that to myself unless i want to move to America and claim I have the obesity ‘disease’.

Which brings me onto my next point, since I am sipping on quite a bit of happy-juice even if it is only a taste or a couple of glasses I still face the booze muffin top. Plus you’ve seen half my #365winesin2013 photos and nearly every second one has some delectable meal of sorts to go with the wine. So in a battle against the wino bulge I have bought a treadmill..

I’m not one of those people who uses something once and locks it away, I am actually a super freak of nature as I love treadmill running. I don’t like running outside as I have a weird running style. Yep-lame excuse I know, but I tend to prance like a horse when I run, even when I’m sprinting. Well that’s what Mr. Spittoon likens it too. To keep my bases covered I try to run at least 5kms 5 days a week minimum. So far so good.

Now here is the juicy part, a little exciting, a little oops I feel a bit guilty, but hey these things happen, I’m not perfect. So one morning I woke up to a private message on twitter from a winemaker. I will leave all names and brands undisclosed so I don’t get into any more trouble (I don’t want to have to lock myself in the cellar again now do I…hehehehe). This winemaker was rather upset over one of my tasting notes about their wine in my #365winesin2013 album on facebook. Yep I kind of knew sooner or later someone wouldn’t like my opinion. Any how I had basically wrote the wine was over the hill and no good. The winemaker was offended and said it was definitely at a stage of oxidisation (oxygen had seeped into the bottle and turned it to vinegar basically… this is caused by the wine not being airtight when sealed and/or poor handling/storage of the bottle).

I have to admit I felt pretty bad that someone had got so upset over this so I amended my note to say it was oxidized and to explain what this exactly is. In my defense to said winemaker I explained that I am just a lover of wine who likes to write about wine for the average drinker. The average drinker probably doesn’t know when a wine is good or bad, jeeeze just the other day I witnessed someone drinking a red wine that had been open for 3 weeks and they enjoyed it. Good on them I say. So simply I was just noting down what I tasted and my conclusion was that I didn’t really like the wine (and that I thought it was a bit “decrepit” ). In the end who cares.. what I like, you might not like and what you like I might not like. This is the whole point to my blog – Wine is personal, we all have different tastes, no one is right or wrong and we drink what we drink because it’s delicious.

Simple!

So on I will go with my challenge, I am feeling confident having just posted the 187th wine, which leaves 178 different wines to go… Bring it on, i can do this (i’m visualising cracking into that 365th bottle right now!).

Check out my #365winesin2013 Facebook album here and if you have any suggestions on what should appear in the last 178 spots please leave a comment below.