Who could know better than people who call themselves Wine Rambler that sometimes a wine needs to be approached sideways. Especially if we are nervous about a wine because we know little about it and fear that we may have gotten it wrong. So we'll start with a little tune – bear with us – and will, after somewhat aimless rambling, at the end of this post – promise! - get fearlessly tasting.

It starts with a non-translatable german word Schlager. „Kitschy songs in the vein of Barry Manilow or Chris de Burgh“ would probably be the the way to explain it to the anglophone world. Anyway, one of the best known Schlager is about greek wine, so brace yourselves:

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3amXSFEFxV0 autoplay:0]

Griechischer Wein ist so wie das Blut der Erde.

It is the start of the new year. Time to think about what to do better, what not to do any more and what new things to try. It is time for new year's resolutions! Accordingly, the Wine Rambler committee assembled on New Year's Eve and came up with a list of wine related resolutions. Drinking less, by the way, is not one of them.
As we all know, sticking to new year's resolutions is not easy, so I looked around for good advice on how to succeed. Time for instance offer useful suggestions such as 'Do What the Dalai Lama Would Do', which is explained as follows:

... in which a sentimental german song will be played, that same song clumsily explained by means of homespun sociology, a funny mishearing of a line from said song (which will not be half as funny in translation) recounted, all of this somehow segued into a review of a wine from greece, which itself will be positioned squarely within the context of the Wine Rambler's utter ignorance of greek wine.

Don't miss it!

It is time again to write up some wine relate news: the juicy, the interesting, the random and all other sorts of miscellaneous wine information the Wine Rambler happened to stumble upon over the past few weeks.

Let's start with one of your favourite topics, women and wine. Apparently, girls are somewhat intimidated by buying wine and they need a little help to overcome that fear: if the wine label is pink, features stilettos or if the wine is called 'Girls' Night Out' or 'Bitch', girls are apparently more likely to buy it. This is according to the Canadian National Post that recently ran an article entitled Wine, women and wrong?, asking the question: 'Do tarted-up labels do a disservice to female drinkers?' I do wonder why they do not consider that men too might want to make a wine their personal bitch?