Gorgeous!

I gave blood today so I'm not supposed to have any alcohol. But then six years ago someone told me you get drunk super fast after you give blood and I have to go to Rite Aid later so I just opened this stunning bottle of rose!

Also check out the amazing pillow the charming Zoe Chao got me for my birthday. It makes cravings happen and my head feel nice, just like wine does! Girl gets me.

This wine smells nice, a little floral and a little mineral-y and I feel like people often talk about tasting cranberry in roses? Honestly, I love a nice, tart rose but I have trouble getting the aromatics promised. But I'm really into how pretty they are. And this one is gorgeous! It has lovely salmon-pink color and it comes in this curvy bottle with a lavender and gold top label or whatever it's called. It's like Barbie's wine, but hip. And apparently it tastes good, cause I'm enjoying it and my cool black friend in the Trader Joe's wine department highly recommended it.

This is an aspirational wine. It's the kind of wine you buy and you're like, no way am I going the whole summer without being invited to a garden party with this baby waiting in the fridge! I will learn French in the car! I will roller skate when doing errands and become "that girl who roller skates everywhere" and notoriety will become me! I don't feel faint because of my blood donation.

I do. I feel faint. I don't know what a garden party is.

Victory....?

The real win here is my mom saved my soccer trophies because she loves me.

Celebrity wines

Ok, I get that I can't have a celebrity body, in any interpretation of that phrase. I get that I can't have a celebrity lifestyle. But when they make a wine? Well, the Coppolas have made it clear I can at least have that.

But oh no. Brad and Angie have to win this one. You can imagine my excitement when I saw this in my inbox:

Followed by my utter disappointment when I clicked the link and this popped up:

I mean fuck you! I know it sold out back in March, but I thought this was my chance! Then I found out that wine distributors like Shelby Ledgerwood were buying it all up. When asked if she'd tried it, Shelby said she didn't have to. Everyone wanted it, even without her opinion, so she just sold it off. Why waste a bottle? 

I think it's kind of unfair that celebrities get to have wine we can't have on top of everything else. Which means there's only one thing to do: saturate the market for celebrity wine. Below are some suggestions I have for some new celebrity wines:

Heidi Montag California 2009 Red Blend

This full bodied wine is a mish-mash of all your favorite reds. Heady aromas of strawberry and petrol entice you to take a sip, at which point you don't like it but you can't quite articulate why. It should be great, but it's a petty, ugly little wine.

Carrot Top 2011 Rose

Brilliant pink color with slight petillance. Bright and acidic with angular, precise aromas of tangerine and meth. A fine, drinkable rose perfect for wasting an entire afternoon.

Dame Judy Dench Grand Cuvee

This dusty but magnificent sparkling wine goes with everything. Stern and delightfully fungal with notes of gooseberry and flint. A treasure.

Carson Daly 1998 Cabernet Sauvignon

A star vintage that declined in the early 2000s and is now picking up an extraordinary bottle bouquet of perfume and peppy rose petal aromatics. The wine that just won't quit.

Straight talk

Wine tasting can seem like just a lot of speculation, a lot of waxing poetic on your behalf and waning interest on behalf of your companions. And it doesn't help that wine labels are printed in what may as well be code in most cases. European wines especially are incredibly difficult to decipher. They never tell you the grape, they have all sorts of levels of regions, and they have the audacity to use languages other than English.

So you can imagine my delight when I took this French rose (Saint Roch Les Vignes 2012) out of the fridge and saw this forthright label on the back:

That is chill as fuck. And this wine was as chill and straightforward as its business on the back. Not all wine has to be complex, just like not all boyfriends need to be marriage material. Sometimes it's fun to drink a simple rose. It's like dating a guy in a band.

People often assume rose wines will be sweet because they're pink. And while White Zinfandel with lots of residual sugar is common, most rose wines are tart and dry and ultra-refreshing. All they are are red grapes made in the style of white wine. This means the juice is not fermented on the skins (which is how red wines get their rich color and higher tannins). Any red grapes can be used, and this, not sweetness, is what determines the color pink the wine turns out. Syrah will yield a brilliant magenta, while Pinot Noir a delicate ballet slipper pink. "Blanc de noirs" refers to white sparkling wine made from red grapes, but roses, and sparkling roses, will do a cold soak before separating off the skins from the juice to give extra aromatics and a splash of pink.

This wine was a charming salmon color. Not too complex, it smelled floral, like perfume or honeysuckle, with bursts of citrus, chiefly lime, wet stone and white peach. It's not especially complex or layered, but honestly, when it's 80 degrees at 8pm and you just want a cool glass of something tart and peppy, who has time to sit and analyze and pontificate and consider? 

I have more important things to do.

If only Francis could take a cue from this wine and live life honestly. And have a label that looks like a frowning sundial.