About

Welcome to our little wine blog with a touch of cooking thrown in here and there when I remember to take pictures.  My name is Jen and my boyfriend Andy and I have been having a lot of fun exploring wine more seriously for the past few months. It really is a fun hobby and we’re learning new things with each bottle.

The idea came up during a trip to Australia in November 2008.  We had the most amazing time visiting the gorgeous Hunter Valley Wine Region where we tasted oh about thirty different wines in one day.  Yes we swallowed them all, but luckily we were also being chaffuered around by Hans from Boutique Wine Tours.  We highly recommended taking the tour if you are ever in Sydney.

The Hunter Valley wines are not heavily exported to the United States.  Tyrell’s is the only one I have ever seen in a wine shop here.  The region is very well known for its semillons and during our tours we had a lot of them.  The second most popular varietal seemed to be chardonnay and we also had a lot of those.

During our trip to Sydney we also splurged on a very nice seven course dinner at Astral Restaurant along with matching wines.  Our sommelier seemed very young, but he was also charming, knowledgable and enthusiastic.  The wines were amazing and went very well with the food.  It was there we decided we wanted to learn more about wine and how wine goes with food and blog about our adventures.

You might have noticed the two little dogs on the main page of the site and in the scoring graphics.  They are Baxter and Basie, hence B & B.  B & B was also the name of my Grandparent’s restaurant when I was growing up, so I automatically loved it when Andy suggested it.  Baxter is my nearly 10 month old miniature dachshund and represents the snootier side of wine.  Basie is Andy’s oafish one and a half year old corgi and represents that wine really is for everyone.  But really, they are just our boys that get into a lot of trouble and make up for it by being cute and adorable and cuddly.

My own personal history with wine is very limited.  I really didn’t drink much at all until I started dating Andy (that sounds bad huh?).  I had sips here and there over the years, but never really knew what I was drinking or how complex the wine world was.  I went on a cruise through western Europe in 2007 and with dinner each night we had local wines from whatever country we were in.  I wince now wishing I could have appreciated that more.  So here I am at nearly 30 years old (another wince) and learning about wine for the first time.

<this is the awesome area for Andy to hit the edit button and insert whatever he wants to say about his history with wine>