Hello Friends and Wine Lovers!

Welcome to the First Annual Carpe Vinum April Fool’s Day Blind Tasting! How can it be an annual event if it’s the first one, you may ask? I guess you have a good point there, but this seems like so much fun, I’ll undoubtedly do this again next year!

“So what’s the deal with the April Fool’s Day thing?” you may ask.

Well, April Fool’s Day has a long and colorful History. However, I didn’t find any of the explanations of how the day came about interesting enough to put here, and no one can seem to agree on which one is the correct one. So I guess I’ll make one up. . .

In Ancient times, somewhere between the Dawn of Civilization and Breakfast, the Ancient Villagers would come to a consensus about which one was the most foolish, and that person was dubbed “King Fool For a Day.” This person was carried atop a chariot to the Ancient Town Square where the Ancient Festivities took place. And there they drank wine. Oh, the wine they drank! Wine which they drank until they all were acting as foolish as the King Fool. The following day, the Ancient Villagers would awake and ask, “Ugh. . what day is it?” to which other Ancient Villagers might answer, “Why, it’s April 2nd, you silly, foolish person!”

Hm. . .okay. . .so that’s a pretty awful story. But this April Fool’s Day I’ll be serving you all a Blind Tasting! The concept behind it is to taste the wine without the preconceived notions of knowing what it is you’re drinking, what the label looks like, reputation of the winemaker or region it’s from, and so on, all to get an unbiased idea about the wine. Blind tastings are usually are quite surprising in the finding of wines you might not have normally considered. To level the ground, I’ve chosen 7 wines all at the same price: $14.95.

To make things a bit of extra fun, I’ll be having a bit of a contest, as well, to see how much all of you have learned in our wine studies, here. For each wine, I’ll have a multiple choice quiz to see if you can guess the varietal, blend, region and so on. The wine-guessing difficulties will be ranging from “Pretty Easy to Guess” to “I’ll Be Really Impressed If You Get This One.” Also, I’ll award prizes to the highest scores, announcing the following day after I’ve had a chance to go through them. I’ll have extra credit questions, as well to level the playing field too.

**First Prize is:
A Vacu-Vin Wine Vacuum Pump and a 1-Year Subscription to the Wine Spectator (Last Year’s)!

**Second Prize:
A Waiter’s Corkscrew (The nice shiny metal one) and a 6-Month Subscription to the Wine Spectator (From the Last 6 Months)!

**Third Prize:
A Capitano Corkscrew and a 6-Month Subscription to the Wine Spectator (From 6 Months ago)!

At any rate, it’s going to be a lot of fun! I’ll have the wines available for purchase, sealed in the paper bags, to protect the identities, so we don’t spoil the fun for the rest of the crowd! I’ll reveal the identities of all of the wines on the following day via an email, just like this one!

Hope to see you tomorrow! (Get it? “See?” Heh. . blind tasting? I know. . .foolish joke. . .)

So Friday, April 1st, between 4:30 and 9:00 PM it’s:

An April Foolish Blind Tasting!
Wine #1 What Could it Be?
Wine #2 What Could it Be?
Wine #3 What Could it Be?
Wine #4 What Could it Be?
Wine #5 What Could it Be?
Wine #6 What Could it Be?
Wine #7 What Could it Be?

A stellar deal at $10 for the first 5, and $6 for the Extra 2 Premium Pours, and $5 for the dessert pour.
Hope to see you here!
Seize the Wine!

Next Friday tasting is Petite Syrah!

M