Kendall Giles

If you like wine, want to learn good ways to tell the differences between all those grape varieties, or maybe even want to know which wines to pair with which foods, then you might want to check out The Wine Guy : Everything You Want to Know about Buying and Enjoying Wine from Someone Who Sells It, by Andy Besch.

Andy, a former television executive, turned his love of wine into a very successful Manhattan wine store called West Side Wine. In The Wine Guy, he condenses his passion, knowledge, and love of wines into a very readable and useful book. You will learn not only about the different grapes, the different wine regions, and how to taste the wines, but you will also gain the confidence and knowledge you need to buy the wines you like, pair wines with foods, and try new wines you might enjoy. In a sense, this book trains you to be your own Wine Guy.

In addition, the book contains handy charts and tables so that you can learn to decipher wine bottle labels, pick wines according to desired flavors, decide which lesser-known wines to try based on your current preferences, pick which wines to try based on which grape, and determine which are the primary grapes of the different geographic wine regions. Amusing stories and insightful tips---from how to buy wine in restaurants to how to calculate the number of bottles of wine you will need for a party---add to the useful tables and wine knowledge, resulting in a very enjoyable book.

Cheers!

Another murder.

From the Richmond Times Dispatch:

BLACKSBURG -- Haiyang Zhu and Xin Yang, two Chinese graduate students at Virginia Tech, were seemingly doing nothing more than enjoying a quiet conversation and a cup of coffee together at a campus cafe when, abruptly, Zhu pulled a knife.

In the following seconds, the school's police chief said today, Zhu savagely attacked the 22-year-old woman, cutting off her head.

It was a little icy in Richmond this morning.

Here is a short video I made of a trip to Daniel Island, South Carolina.