Not many can claim such a refined pallet.

In 2013, my wife and I made a different type of New Year’s resolution.  Rather than working on changing ourselves, we decided to focus on spending time together and trying new things on a monthly basis.  As anyone with young children knows, time is always at a premium and we wanted to make sure we had some time reserved for us.  We ended up spending our “us time” reading some new books, cooking a few interesting recipes, and creating a handful of surprisingly beautiful art projects – all together.

It was obviously a more enjoyable resolution to keep than loosing weight or exercising.

For 2014, we wanted to try something that would continue focusing on the time we spend together as a couple.  We settled on a bi-monthly wine and cheese night.  This is a pretty big area of novelty for us because, until now, we have both been non-drinkers.

So far, the cheeses have been quite good (with the exception of a gruyere that smelled/tasted like a dirty old gym sock wrapped in a dirty old jockstrap).

The wines have been a bit more hit and miss.  We tried a very dry red which was fairly harsh.  There was a pink moscato that was very, very acidic.  The two ice wines we have sampled both proved to be quite tasty.  We even bought an expensive aged tawny port that tasted exactly like prune juice and gasoline.  The best so far was a nice Moscato d’ Asti – very light and sweet.

When ranking our picks thus far, we discovered that if we simply listed the wines from the lowest alcohol content (5%) to the highest (20%), it correlated exactly from our favorite to least favorite picks.  The less alcohol in the bottle, the more we enjoyed it.

Essentially, we like grape juice.