Wine Rising is becoming WineKick

iPhone icon for WineKick: the wine sidekick

If you've been following my wine writings for a while, you know I've changed names a few times. When I first started blogging, I did so using the name Cheap Wine Report. I realized I would never get free samples with a name like that, so I changed to Wine Pilgrim. That didn't make any sense, so I changed to Practical Wine Reviews. A few months later I decided that if I wanted to sell wine from my website, I would need a better name and chose Wine Rising.

That brings us to today. I've been working on a wine recommendation app for iPhone for about seven months, and I don't think Wine Rising is a good name for an app, so I'm changing the blog to match the name of the app, which will be WineKick: the wine sidekick. 

WineKick should be coming out in the Apple App Store in April 2013, so I'm going to start blogging now to promote it. I will start moving all the good posts from Wine Rising (and they're not all good) over to WineKick in the next few weeks, as well as posting a ton of new blog posts at WineKick. So check out the new site at www.WineKick.com! It will be hosted by Squarespace rather than Blogger, so it may end up being a prettier website. It will definitely be a lot less free (Squarespace is $10 a month compared to $0 per ever for Blogspot). It's possible I'll end up back at Blogspot, but I want to give Squarespace a try. Let me know what you think of the WineKick design!

Also, if you subscribed to the WineKick feedburner which sends you and email of every post, I've imported your email address into my new email subscription service, Mailchimp. I'll be sending out a weekly email cleverly named the "WineKick Weekly." If you don't want to sign up for that, please email me at dano@winerising.com so I know to remove you. And if you want to sign up for the fabulous WineKick Weekly, you can do that here. 

Thanks for following my writing at Wine Rising! It's been fun, but the fun will only get better at WineKick! 

Cheers, 
Dano

Taking the Certified Sommelier Exam: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Test Day

I've written a post on How to Prepare for and Pass the Certified Sommelier Exam, and I tried to keep that post very objective. This post will be more subjective and cover my personal experience on test day.

How to Prepare for and Pass the Certified Sommelier Exam

So you've taken the Court of Master Sommeliers (CMS) Level 1 and want to take Level 2. How do you prepare? Simply put, several hours of study a week for several months along with a healthy dose of service practice. A great way to move from CMS Level to to Level 2 is to take the Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW) or the Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET) Level 3 (Advanced) exam. The CSW is like a CMS Level 1.5, and the WSET Advanced is like a CMS Level 1.75. If you know the content of WSET Advanced well, you should be ready for the wine theory portion of the CS exam.

Comparision of Wine Certifications - CSW, WSET, and Certified Sommelier

If you are looking to establish your credibility to enhance your wine career or just challenge yourself to learn and have fun, you have several certification options available to you. These range from local schools to international programs. A local program (Boston University Wine Studies Program) gave me the opportunity to learn and taste hundreds of wines with two MWs and one CWE, but I also wanted certifications from nationally and globally recognized organizations. There are several nationally and globally-respected certifying bodies. I have personal experience with three of them, so that is what this post is about: the Court of Master Sommeliers, Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET), and Society of Wine Educators. I have no personal experience with these, but depending on your career goals, other schools/certifying bodies such as the Culinary Institute of America, International Sommelier Guild, Sommelier Society of America, or International Wine Guild may be the right next step for you. 

Here is a summary of the WSET, CMS, and SWE beginner-to-intermediate certifications listed in order of increasing difficulty. I have not written about the CWE, WSET Diploma, MW, AS, or MS because I have no personal experience with those programs.

Falanghina Feudi di San Gregoro 2010 - wild and wonderful

Falanghina is a wild, ancient wine from southern Italy that has achieved newfound popularity in the past decade. In her book Anything but Chardonnay, Laura Holmes Haddad says “the wines were once served to emperors, and generals in the Roman wars would send troops into battle with a supply.” Ancient and fashionable are great, but here is what you need to know about Falanghina: it is delicious! 

Best cheap wine at Trader Joe's? Taste test winners and losers.

What’s the best cheap (under $10) wine at Trader Joe’s? I bought 12 bottles of wine from Trader Joe’s (6 white and 6 red), covered them in paper bags, invited friends over to taste them all, and they rated how much they liked each wine. The rating scale goes from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest. Sample size of about 10 people. 

Black Box Cabernet Sauvignon Review - The PBR of Red Wine

I will fight a horde of hungry lions to find a great beer, but will still drink mediocre beer if it’s all I can find... or afford. While drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon with a friend one day, he took a sip and said, “PBR: there’s nothing wrong with it.” That’s how I feel about Black Box Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 – it’s cheap, it’s red wine, and it’s easy to find. As a bonus, it’s available as a boxed wine or as a “juice box.” The wine box gives you 3 liters (4 bottles) of wine for $20-25 (averages out to $5-6 per bottle) and stays fresh for a month after opening. And the juice box… that’s just cool.