PageFiftyNine

Welcome to the 52nd pairing of PageFiftyNine- which, in all honesty, is really the first pairing. A full calendar year ago, I saw a wine stain in one of my books and had a silly but meaningful thought: what if instead of pairing wine and cheese, I paired my two favorite things- wine and books? How many times had this combination been the highlight of my evening, or my afternoon, or my weekend? That little thought grew into a passion, which I hope will continue to grow in 2019. But, instead of looking forward in this post, I want to spend some time looking back. This journey has been incredible, so much so that picking out the highlights proved difficult. A few, though: - Pairing Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and then learning of his passing a day and a half later. - My friend Garret risking life and limb to position my mountain-themed pairing on the edge of a cliff. - Creating a business plan only to realize starting a business costs more money than I can afford

On Christmas Day of next year, I may be in a German Christmas market sipping on genuine Gleuhwein, but this Christmas I had the next best thing: a steaming mug of the homemade kind, and a book that takes place in a snowy castle. The Pairing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by JK Rowling and Homemade Gleuhwein I assume that Harry Potter needs no introduction, so I'll leave it at this: my favorite book to read for the first time was #4, my favorite book to reread is #6, and I'm pretty sure I'm a Ravenclaw. Ok- now on to the wine! Gleuhwein is a mulled wine that's served very warm and drunk out of a mug (as opposed to a wine glass). My parents lived in Germany for a few years and picked up the recipe along the way. Making Gleuhwein involves buying a VERY large quantity of Burgundy wine and adding to it a reduced mixture of sugar, water, and spices. You let it all hang out over night and voila- delicious mulled wine ready to be warmed and served. To

Welcome, welcome, welcome! We have reached the final three pairings of 2018. Today I've featured not only a great book, but a great program that I joined this year: Book of the Month Club. The Pairing The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle and  Jean-Claude Debeaune  Special Selection Pinot Noir Book of the Month Club features five books per month, from which you can select one or more to be shipped to your doorstep. They highlight new authors, bestsellers, fiction and non-fiction, fan favorites, you name it. Some of my favorite reads from this year have been my BotM books, including The Dinner List. This book made me cry and think and sigh. But mostly cry. I haven't shed as many book tears since I read The Light Between Oceans .  The basic premise is that the main character shows up to dinner only to discover the attendees are the same people she once listed as her dream dinner guests. Throughout the evening, they all dig in to meals and to the past to see why they have be

I'm telling you, the book is better than the movie- and that's saying something in this case, because the movie was awesome . I haven't tried pairing the movie with this wine, but I'm open to the idea. The Pairing The Martian by Andy Weir and Red Rock Reserve Merlot Comedy meets science meets action/adventure. And then there's the book! (Kidding... sort of.) Andy Weir is a computer engineer and space nerd turned author who gave us this incredible story of survival and perseverance through the completely lovable astronaut Mark Watney. He leaves nothing out- Weir doesn't say "but then I figured out how to fix the HAB unit." He actually details the calculations and process by which a space habitation on Mars could be fixed. It's an incredible feat of a book, which is why it is one of the last pairings of the year. Red Rock wines "embody the universal quest for discovery to reach the summit, no matter where that may be," whic

As we gear up toward the end of the year, I haven't been able to spend as much time writing as I'd like. There are only a few more pairings left this year, but instead of finding it easier to document each pairing, I'm finding it harder. You'd think my Psychology degree would help explain it... but a large part of me thinks it's just the combination of exhaustion and the ever-increasing to-do list. But, in a rare burst of energy, I decided to do a double feature! Pairing: 1984 by George Orwell and Homage to Heritage Macon Villages Chardonnay and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley It's the decades old debate: which fate are we heading towards as a society, the bleak, fear-inducing wartime in Orwell's 1984 or the drugged and clueless whitewash of Huxley's Brave New World ? Either way, it seems clear that humans are not meant to be numbers on a page or unquestioning cows in a line. Eventually, some will fight back with a simple idea: where someone

As we roll (or, in my case, tumble) towards the end of the year, I find myself picking up new discoveries for some of the last pairings. There are heaps of books that I want to pair, but to pick one for this project feels a little more personal. The Pairing One Man's Meat by E.B. White and Clean Slate Riesling My brother passed along this book after he read it- it's actually a compilation of magazine articles that E.B. White wrote from 1938-1943 detailing his new life on a farm in New England. Clean Slate is a nod to this drastic move that E.B. White makes. He sells half his belongings, quits his job, and picks his whole family out of New York City just to plop them onto some land that none of them know how to work. They all start anew and, in the changes that E.B. White notes in their sleepy town, the reader realizes that starting anew looks the same no matter the time or place. The Riesling may be going a step too far, but when you're reading a book about