This is an overly long story about a bottle of wine.

I'm sort of a wine snob wannabe. I shop the premium wines almost exclusively. I try to keep to the bottles that are priced no more than $14.00. I used to try to keep to the bottles that are priced no more than $20.00 but I found I was going broke so I had to throttle that back a bit! I'm always on the lookout for some good wine. Fortunately, we have a pretty good liquor store close to us, for which I will be eternally grateful. Pennsylvania liquor stores can be pretty dodgy!

When I went in a few times ago, I was going in to pick up a bottle of scotch for Buzz because it was the day he really hurt his back and he was in need of a little liquid aspirin. I try to pick up at least one bottle of wine every time I go in to the liquor store so that we have a prayer of keeping a bottle or two in the house (wine goes fast at our house). I strolled through the merlot section and saw this wine that was on sale. The price was right ($9.99) and the label was kicky! It's a bright lime green label with a swishy white design and the bottle has bronze-y colored foil over the cork. It caught my eye, so I bought it.

On the night I decided to try it, I opened it up and found that the cork is one of those plastic ones but it wasn't colored to try and look like a cork. It was white and it had the same pattern on it that the label did but in bright green and mauve. I thought that was pretty cool - vive la difference, right? As long as you're not using real cork, why not be different? Then I took my first sip. Oh, my! This was really good wine (which is exactly what I said out loud). It was so good, in fact, that I couldn't stop drinking it until it was gone! A whole bottle is a lot for one person to drink in one evening but it's much worse when that person has already had two glasses of other wine prior to opening said bottle! Yep, that's a bottle and a half, folks! But it was so good!!

And to top it all off, when the bottle was empty, I noticed that the color of the bottle is a smoky topaz color. Very cool! So I liked every single thing about this wine.

I should probably mention the name, huh? It is Pepperwood Grove Merlot, 2001. It's a Napa wine. Go get some and let me know if you like it!