Everyday Wining

  How I discover food and wine pairing and my love for seafood My other friend Dominique lived in the middle of picturesque vineyards. He even had his own little garden with table grapes (and chicken). Walks at his neighbourhood were breath-taking, especially during autumn when the nature in the Loire valley is the most spectacular and vineyards with surrounding forests changed their colours from green to different shades of yellow, orange, red. By now I was already used to the sight of vineyards next to the roads but to spend days in the middle of them was completely new and incredible experience. It was like a fairy-tale for a girl who grew up in the middle of potato and cabbage fields. That big tree is a walnut. We picked nuts from the ground as it did not seem to belong to anyone. Dominique, as Caroline and Christian, liked to eat and drink well. He introduced me to oysters, snails, scallops. I had actually already had oysters when I lived in Rennes but my first impression wa...

  How I am going back to France and getting more conscious about wine by itself and wine-food pairing Next step and maybe even the true beginning of my love for wine came in 2015 when I moved to France for the second time. I generally stayed away from the cheapest bottles, it was possible to get nice wines (for my standards) for just 3-4 euros. I’m sure that I still tried 1.5 euro wines though. And I still do sometimes, not out of necessity but rather curiosity. One of the biggest surprises from that time is Roche Mazet Merlot from Pays d’Oc that costs only 2.30 euros. I still buy it sometimes, especially when I want to be nostalgic about my time in Angers. This also became “our wine” for me and my friend Berit, who studied there with me. Before moving to France again, I had been volunteering for different twin-cities (my hometown Võru and Chambray-les-Tours not too far from Angers) events. Thanks to that, I became friends with Caroline and Christian, an amazingly cool couple...

How I moved to France for Erasmus, discovered cheap wines, visited first wine cellar and somewhat started improving my taste The first bigger eye-opening came when I moved to study in France in 2011. I had an allowance from university so I had more money than I had ever had but I was raised to save whenever possible. Wine was one product to hold back on. I was shocked about how cheap French wines were. Even the cheapest and nastiest wines in Estonia were over 2 euros but in France, you could (and still can) find bottles for less than 1.5 euros. The cheapest wine that I have ever bought was 80 cents a bottle. Well… you could not buy the quality for it though. This wine cost 1.36 euros. It was so bad that I tried to improve by adding Coke to it but it was still undrinkable.  And to qualify as undrinkable for my standards back then, it had to be really terrible. One other wine that was a tad more expensive (2.30 euros) was a rosé from Languedoc-Roussillon that I luckily enjoyed more...

Why this blog and my first interactions with wine The purpose of this blog is to record my own experience and thoughts about wine more widely than I do it in Vivino. Maybe someone finds it also interesting or useful to read. As the name of the blog says, it’s about everyday wining (there could be also some whining if situation demands). So I will be writing about whatever wines I drink regardless if it’s a special occasion or not. But first, a short introduction to how I discovered my love for wine. I have often wondered, how do people in the wine world find their way into it. Has it been their family business? Have they inherited vineyards, wine shops? Have their parents been interested in wine and passed the interest on? How early people understand that they are interested in wine? Does the interest just appear and grow over time or has it always been there? How does it begin? I have to mention already now that during my journey to wine, both lack of knowledge and money pla...