Welcome!

For those of you who know me, welcome to my new project. For those that don't, hail and well met. Pull up a chair, grab an imaginary glass of wine. Cigars are welcome. Feel free to wash off the garlic from your hands if you've come from the kitchen, like I just did.

Here's a place to kick back and enjoy yourself. Even with the economy crashing on the rocks, it's not hard to find some things worth savoring. When I lived in Atlanta, one of the greatest pleasures in life for me was a Barefoot Wines Zinfandel and a mild, vanilla and toast Romeo y Julieta Corona. On a steamy summer night, the combination was just perfection - the harsher elements of both wine and cigar dissolved in the humidity, leaving just the blackberry jam of the wine and the smooth, woody-vanilla cigar. It turned the dirty old garage where my wife exiles me to smoke into a personal spa.

I'm still looking for a good cigar store in Brunswick, Ohio. My wife and I did spot the Mayfield Smoke shop in Cleveland's Little Italy, but we didn't have the time or money to stop. Maybe next time. If anyone reading this gets a chance to visit them, let me know how it goes.

I am extremely pleased by the wines you can get out here in the Cleveland area. I've escaped from the blue laws of Georgia, much to my happiness, and grocery stores like Buehler's have a lot more wine than I saw in Atlanta. Any time your local grocery store has regular wine tastings, you know you've got something good at hand. I'm also pleasantly surprised by The Winery at Wolf Creek. Most East Coast wineries end up producing a very sweet, simple, flat product when they use the local grape. Wolf Creek doesn't quite escape this sin - Their sweet red table wine, Redemption, was a toothache in a bottle. But then again, Ohio's not well known for its grapes. It's apples, though... their Original Sin apple wine was startlingly good. My wife and I both love hard cider; this apple wine was much like a Woodchuck, but uncarbonated, not as sweet, and with a little more depth of character. Now to find a good cigar pairing...

Off to the restaraunt now. More later tonight. Keep the fire going for me.