But the focus of my blog posts will continue to be on wine tasting and enjoyment.  We will review wines, match wines with food and also provide useful tips for buying wine, storing wine and most importantly, drinking wine.  These ideas are being consolidated into the book and should provide you with a great read in the coming months.  I have found that in blogging about wine and then researching and writing a book on wine that I learned a great deal – much more so than just by drinking wine.  I feel a responsibility to ensure what I communicate and share to be accurate and well articulated.  I feel a responsibility to provide insight and make your reading of my writing worth your investment in time.

I am targeting Wine Sense(s) to be available around the end of 2013 and am working hard to meet that self-imposed deadline.  Yet, I won’t do anything to rush publication if it compromises quality and your reading experience.  I am finding that it is taking much more effort and underlying technology support than writing and publishing my first book, Still Stupid at Sixty (published under the pseudonym, Blake Stevens).  Wine Sense(s) has required much more in terms of structure, research, citation and photography.  I expect the entire effort to be about twenty times the effort it took to write Still Stupid at Sixty.

I have read about twenty books on wine over the last several years and learned a great deal. The have fallen into general categories of:

• Wine tasting and appreciation
• Wine and philosophy
• Wine making
• Wine lifestyle and history
• Specialty wine books (such as on wine language and grape varietals)

Through reading all those books, I learned a great deal and when combined with continued practice tasting wine, I continued to enhance my wine tasting enjoyment further.  Yet, I looked back and felt there could have been a better and far more efficient way to improve my skills and enjoyment.  Wine Sense(s) is about how to improve wine tasting and appreciation.  It discusses how wine tasting works through our senses and how to improve those experiences.  It also provides (hopefully) solid insights and ideas on buying, storing, serving and drinking wine.  I believe Wine Sense(s) will broadly be of interest to people who are new to or moderately experienced in wine drinking and want to improve their tasting experiences and enjoyment.   My aspiration for Wine Sense(s) is to be a more approachable book than Emile Peynaud‘s classic, The Taste of Wine: The Art and Science of Wine Appreciation.  Peynaud‘s book is the best book I have read on wine appreciation, but when I started it several years ago, it was difficult to digest (even though it is beautifully written and translated form the original French into English).  Wine Sense(s) is meant to be the book you read first.

I will keep you posted of expected publication date for Wine Sense(s) as we move forward.  Now back to writing on wine!

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2013.  Steve Shipley
SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook
Wine Pinterest Boards
Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

The post Wine writing update appeared first on SAZ in the Cellar.

I have a lot of author friends and they sometimes get distracted focusing on marketing, social media, taking classes on creative writing and participating in a number of other activities that seem like writing, but are not really writing.  They have to keep reminding themselves that there is no other activity that makes you a writer than to just sit down and actually write!

Therefore, wine education Lesson 1 is to taste a variety of different wines and understand what you like and what you don’t.  And Lesson 2 will be on the difference between tasting and drinking.  I want you to taste wine, not just drink it.  That would be an incredible waste.

Having said that and gotten Lesson 1 out of the way, there are a variety of different things that comprise a simple wine education that should increase your pleasure of drinking wine.  These include:

• Reading a variety of different books on wine
• Attending tastings with other people and sharing your tasting experiences
• Trying different wines with different foods, including different wines with cheese and chocolate
• Writing down tasting notes
• Participating in vertical and horizontal wine tastings
• Attending some specialty sessions on glassware, decanters and other wine paraphernalia
• Learning a bit about how to make wine
• Experiencing and thinking about what wine does to your senses

I have written over 125 blog posts in the last year and plan to write plenty more.  Many of my posts have been about reviewing specific wines, matching wine with food, and enjoying the wine lifestyle more.  Some have been educational.  Therefore, I am not going to label any of my future posts as ‘educational.’  many will be, but hopefully many of those already written have been also.

The key thing is that with a little more understanding of wine, you are likely to enjoy tasting and drinking wine a lot more.  And it makes it easier to share the experience and talk about it with others who enjoy drinking wine also.  I have certainly found that to be the case for me and many of my friends.  Let’s learn a bit more together.

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2013.  Steve Shipley
SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook
Wine Pinterest Boards
Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

The post Wine education – Lesson 1 appeared first on SAZ in the Cellar.