Blend your own wine, or copy a famous one ...

Today the wine-calender I got for Christmas pointed me to the Fusebox, which is kit that allows you to make your own blend of 6 (high quality ???) Napa Valley mono-cepage bottles in order to either create your own personal favorite or try to mimic one of the great but unaffordable famous wines like Chateau Petrus or whatever.

Their promotion video is nice to watch, but apparently the manual has been removed from their website (probably because it harmed their sales too much: this is where the real value is of course, the bare wines you can buy in any local wine store)

Unfortunately they do not ship outside US thus I will have to find an alternative if I ever want to try something like that myself (or if someone can bring it I'd be very grateful :-))

Wine courses

For those that want an entry level course in wines: the guys from SoWine that started my intrest in wines are planning another set of 5 eveningcourses on wines in Schoten.

Unfortunately the courses are on monday evenings, thus I will not be able to attend, but if the course is the same quality than the short version that I attened at the Sint Michiel Open Leer Centrum in 2007 it will be a good, no nonse introduction of the how to start appreciating wines and especially how not to fall victim to too much details that someone told me about after attending the wine course at Piva in Antwerp.

Having said all the above, I am still very happy with the course from tastevin that I finished last year, but I will stay on the lookout for new courses to attend in the coming months/years.