Pizza and Wine, Wine and Pizza

We saw it on the news. People who drink red wine live longer. I said, count me in! We didn't know anything about wine other than you don't drink it from a milk glass or a beer mug. Not a problem, I am a willing learner. Without a mentor, an aficianado, a vintner or a wine snob in the room and not knowing who to ask our embarrassing questions of, we did what we had to do. We drove right down to Rite-Aid to do some research in the wine section. Already it was overwhelming. Maybe if doctors had agreed that wine does help you to live longer than they would write you a prescription for a starter bottle at least. Here's a nice bottle of Red Mountain, brewed last August and ready to sell now that it is officially 2 months old.

Maybe a bottle of Thunderbird? Side effects may include, nausea, vomiting, dizziness and headaches, loss of vision, job, family and home. I don't know how our homeowners association would accept this. Would sitting on the curb, wrapped in a blanket drinking Thunderbird from a bottle in a brown paper bag be against the HOA rules? But sir, I have a prescription! If you have a decent medical plan they might steer you into the $7-8 bottles of wine that don't have so many side effects. Well, we came home with the boxed wine. No need to worry about breakage or recycling there. That little plastic wine spout on the front of the box was always so much fun to use. Building a wine cellar would be easy too. It would just be several shelves on a wall to hold all the boxes!

After a couple years of that we were able to discern the subtleties of mylar foil and cardboard. Mmmm, 1992, that was a good year for cardboard. We learned and we evolved and now we can appreciate the difference between a cheap bottle of wine and an inexpensive bottle of wine.

I have to admit, I don't know where I am going with pizza making. As I said before, it is a journey so it doesn't have to have an end. Even the Legends of Pizza will tell you that nobody really masters pizza. So too, I think, with wine. We had the opportunity with friends to buy some full barrels of wine a while back.

We purchased 2 full barrels of red wine from a local vintner closing out his inventory. We bottled it and split it among the 3 investors.

Naturally I didn't have enough room to store it in the newly built wine room I had added on so I turned our downstairs shower into an auxillary wine cellar.

The neat thing about bottling your own wine is you can make your own labels too!

I love when dust settles on the bottles. It gives them that pseudo genuine look! These are still too new and fresh.

Pizza and wine, wine and pizza, how could the Italians have lost the war? And why did they side with the Germans? Really! Did you ever have pizza and weinerschnitzel? I don't think so! What were they thinking?