Good Morning!

I am tanned, downloading photos and I doubt I am well rested and I need to restock my savings account! I was on vacation for the past 3 plus weeks. We went to Denver, San Antonio, TX and then to Austin and Dallas. Part of the vacation I was visiting family and then the last week we had family traveling with us. We had days by the pool, cookouts, sunburns and lots of laughs, a few days we were in the mountains hiking, walking in streams and fine dining. Some days we got a late start, other days we were up and running early.

We covered a lot of ground and saw new sites and tried a few new activities and honestly, I need a week of drinking water, eating salads and working out like crazy. I did have a few new wines but mostly we had Margaritas, I think they are the official drink of Texas (besides Lone Star beer). We ate tons of BBQ, mostly tri-tip and ribs and when we had the boys (ages 20 and 14) with us, we had tons of burgers and tex-mex food. If you cut me open today I would bleed salsa and I am sure my cholesterol is at a all time high.

We hit the World’s Best Water park, Schitterban in New Branfuls, TX, We toured the Rangers and Cowboys stadium, totally cool to be in the dugout and in the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders locker room. We had our picture taken on the 50 yard line and I bet it will show up as our Christmas card later this year.

We went to the movies and I read 2 wine books Wine Secrets by Marnie Old and Reading Between the Wines by Terry Theise. Both books are AWESOME! I learned so much in the Wine Secrets book, from simply pairing foods and wine to Acidity levels in wine and how they interact with foods and how to “judge” a wine. Then I started to read Terry Theise’s book and I had seen many reviews of the book for the past several months and could not wait to start reading it. It lays out why wine is important to him and mostly wines’ importance in our world. It is a really interesting read. I will say, he is a great writer and I loved the way it is written and to be honest, I had to look up several words to expand my limited vocabulary to fully understand a few of this stories. But, I learned a ton about Terry and his love and understanding of wine.

I loved his story about first hating wine and how Rod Stewart and being a rockstar shaped his imagine of wine. We all have a story about our first connection to wine. Every afternoon my grandmother would have 4-5 women who would drop by for a cocktail. All their husbands were corporate executes and lawyers and around 3-4 each afternoon, the wine and vodka would flow and for an hour or so they would discuss neighbors, recipes, travel and social events. When I was a small girl, I wanted to grow up and have drinks with my friends every afternoon (funny, how that has worked out). One woman was named Madge, she drove a Cadillac and she was always “put together”. Her clothes so sharp and her jewelry was so glamorous and she would drink red wine and seemed to enjoy herself. Madge was the most popular and when she came in everyone would take notice and she seemed to be the most interesting one of the bunch. I wanted to be Madge. I must have been 6-7 years old and my mind said, Madge is cool and she drinks wine, so I want to be like her.

Anyway, Reading Between the Wines is really a great book for wine drinkers or for anyone who might ask, what’s the big deal about wine? My view point of this book is you can educate yourself until you are blue in the face about wine, but until you understand wine, all you know are facts.

I looked at it like this, you can read books all about raising a baby and then the moment they place your newborn in your hands…well then you know everything you need to know.

I am back from vacation and cleaning out my inbox and going through tasting notes and will be a consistent blogger again….thank you for indulging me in this unfocused look at my vacation and the fun I had. Tomorrow, I promise to talk about more wine stuff and less Tammi stuff!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi