The Pairs With Life Wine Blog is the wine-soaked confessions of me, John Taylor: serial single father and author of the novel, Pairs With life. Yes, I’m talking in first-person, finally. Because this is how I talk in the blog. So that sorta makes sense. And yes, everything in this freaking website is called Pairs With Life, because branding. What can I say? By day, I’m the Director of Marketing for a Napa-based winery, so this whore-like corporate behavior follows me wherever I go. So, speaking of which, let’s talk about Categories.
Recent Posts
Lealtanza Rioja Riserva 2014, Bodega Altanza
Why do Spanish wines have one of the best quality-to-price ratios available? Is it terroir? Winemaking? Government subsidies? All of the above?
Hawk and Horse Red Hills Estate Petite Sirah
You may remember Hawk and Horse, as I espoused the virtues of their Cabernet not long ago. Now, along comes their petite sirah, which is equally worth ranting about.
DRNK Pinot Noir, Cavers Cuvée, Russian River Valley
DRNK is a small family-run operation started by winemaker Ryan Kunde with his wife Katie and her parents. Together their initials spell DRNK – hence the name. Ryan is a die-hard RRV guy who tends to e…
featured wine posts
Featured wine posts are the latest postings on the Pairs With Life Wine Blog. This doesn’t tell you anything about the content, only about how recent the post is. I’m trying to create two new posts every month, so regardless of whether it’s a super-wonky wine pairing post or something hopefully more entertaining, if it’s “Featured,” it’s new. New-er. New-ish. I also recommend that you sing up for my Newsletter, which you can do at the bottom of the page. It’s not really a Newsletter as much as it is a notification of new content. Plus announcements. And cool stuff. Ok, it’s totally a Newsletter. But it’s not spam.
Category: Kids Are Weird
Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?
Hey, JT, Are you smarter than a fifth grader? The short answer is, no, though I would certainly rank myself somewhere above President Cheeto but just under Neanderthal. I can bullshit my way out of pr…
Daddy Juice
In the early 2000’s, when my son was only five years old, we’d enjoy frequent trips to the local park, which was walking distance from my coldly expensive and loveless suburban home. At that time – le…
The Tooth Fairy, Belief Systems and Other Myths
The last note my daughter wrote asked the Tooth Fairy what she did with all the teeth she collected. I responded with a five-page short story that involved Fairy Armies, The Bone Demon and The Magical…
Wine Blog Categories
Wine Blog Categories are another thing entirely. I tried to create descriptive categories so you could sort between the wonky wine stuff and the not-wonky stuff. For the most part, the Wine Pairings category are all about What I’m Drinking on the podcast. These are wines that I’ve received from my sponsor, The Wine Spies. If you’re into knowing the brix of the grapes at the time of harvest, those are the blogs for you. If you want to know what I drink when I’m trying to keep the kids from burning the house down, try a different category.
Category: Weird Marriage
Suburban Disappointment Syndrome
I recognize this despondency all too well. It’s Suburban Disappointment Syndrome, the utterly ironic condition where you get everything you asked for – but didn’t know it would be like this. SDS is th…
10 Amazing Wine Hacks That Will Literally Change Your Life
Oh, wine. The mystique of your magical elixir has delighted us for thousands of years. You’ve inspired centuries of art, poetry, mythos, babies and hangovers. And yet, it’s only until the early 21st c…
Vive la Difference
A month ago, I was honored to win The Monthly Wine Writing Challenge, and my award for doing so was to create the theme for this month’s challenge (#MWWC29). The theme I came up with was Winestory: Th…
Category: Wine and Sex
Unhappy Sex Face
It wasn’t a hookup. We had been on three dates over the period of a month, and had reached that oh-so-intimate phase of texting each other during the day. When she asked if I wanted to have dinner at …
What Wine Pairs With A Lousy Boyfriend?
What wine pairs with a lousy boyfriend? I get asked for a lot of pairing advice, which also means I spend an abnormal amount of time in the wine aisle at my local Safeway supermarket. This is probably…
The Wandering Eye
I was sitting at the outside bar at Farmstead in St. Helena on a gorgeous summer afternoon, when my lunch date caught my wandering eye watching a woman pass by. “You are a flitterer,” she …