Welcome to The Vine and Thistle! My name is Ethan, and I must admit I’m a little nervous in writing this first post. As I sit here on the couch with my beautiful wife, Jackie, we embark on what we both consider the first step toward making a dream of ours a reality. That is, to share our love of wine and food with all who would sit at our table, albeit a virtual one for now.

With The Vine and Thistle, I want to open the world of wine to our guests, especially those just starting on their own journey. I want to learn from and educate others. We’ll discuss the language of wine, explore the wine regions of the world, share our favorite gadgets, as well as our favorite sites and sources for more information on all things wine. We want to answer your wine-related questions, whatever they may be.

With the help of our good friends we will also bring you into the world of whiskey, the “Thistle” element of The Vine and Thistle. Venturing into the world of these spirits and developing an appreciation for them are very recent things for us. The thought of pairing food with whiskey was crazy to me at one point. Only recently did I discover that this is not the case. We’ve found whiskey to be just as rewarding as our adventures in wine.

We love hosting wine tastings and multi-course wine pairing dinners in our home, and we try to demonstrate the magic that wine and food can make when paired together. In the process, sometimes we end up discovering with our guests how a certain wine doesn’t work. We also try to burst our guests’ preconceptions and challenge their palates. I’ve always enjoyed finding the white wine-only drinker and exposing them to a red paired with food, only to discover they love it; a proud moment indeed. We hope to inspire you to do the same. We’ll also share some tasting and menu tips on our site to help you share a special evening with your friends.

Having lived in Europe for the past five years, we have been fortunate to travel to many of the most celebrated wine regions in Europe; Bordeaux, Alsace, Bourgogne (Burgundy), Côtes du Rhône, Provence, Chianti, Alto Adige, Valpolicella, and Tuscany to name more than a few. My dream is to share these experiences with you, so that you too can discover how amazing wine can be. If you can only dream of venturing to Italy or France one day, or if you have been fortunate enough to visit for yourself, we want to take you back through wine and food.

Wherever this site may find you, we hope to make wine and whiskey more approachable, and you more a more confident wine fan. While we may not physically have room for you at our table right now, you’re always welcome at our site. Hopefully one day we will fulfill our dream and then be able to invite you to a physical table to share in our journey. So once again, thank you for stopping by, check in often, send us your questions and please feel free to let us know what you think. Enjoy!    -EZ