Aaron A. Wallace

I went on a walk on the Fourth of July, along the old creek road which I got to from the Rocky Run gate to Brandywine State park. This a good gate since it drops you off at the top of the valley and if you follow the path to the brandywine river you are roughly in the middle of the path along the river. if you turn right you have about a mile walk to the smith bridge parking lot and a walkway under Smith bridge road and onto the woodlawn property. As this all gets absorbed into the First State National Park hopefully there will be more money for trail development. You can easily put together walks of three miles to a dozen miles on the combined trails that make up Brandywine creek and Woodlawn. We got out early enough in the day that it wasn't oppressively hot but the grade at the beginning and end made it a bit of a slog.

Bordeaux is the classic French homeland of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Some of the most expensive and longest lasting wines in the world exist here. Many perfect scores from wine reviewers as well, Robert Parker's championing of the 1982 left bank vintage made his career. In this video I give an overview of the three major regions of Bordeaux. Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc, are the principal grapes of the Graves and Pessac-Leognan regions. Saturens makes a famous dessert wine with Semillon and the process of noble rot.

The Loire Valley is a diverse and giant french wine growing region. Consisting of four major zones: Central Vineyards, Tours, Anjou, Pays Nantais, each producing their own wines of note. From continental to maritime climate and a multitude of soil types the Loire valley produces an immense diversity of wine.

On a Rare Friday off, August fifth, 2016, Christine and I went on a road trip to Turkey Point Lighthouse at the end of Elk Neck in Maryland. To access the lighthouse you have to drive to the end of state route 272 in Maryland which is about an hour drive (forty miles) away from Wilmington, Delaware. This is a great location to do drone filming and the walk is pretty easy and just under a mile, they even have two chemical toilets out by the lighthouse. We had to hustle to get to the lighthouse with usable sun, I am looking forward to going back in the fall, hopefully by then I will take some video and also not have to rush so much. There is a small path that leads off the western end of the lighthouse's meadow this leads down to the waters edge and back to the main trail, there are maybe three or four well secluded spots that were occupied by couples as Christine and I walked back to the car having lost the light for Cell Phone photography. When I get more video equipment I thin...

The lush rolling limestone hills of the Macon form a natural interlude between the Cote d’Or and its satellite the Cote Chalonnaise. As in the Cote d’Or the white grape is Chardonnay, while the Red grape can be either Gamay, or Pinot Noir. The more serious wines are produced to the south of the region under the appellation Pouilly-Fuisse and its satellites.The wine is classified in three broad tiers: Macon, Macon-Villages, and Pouilly-Fuisse and its satellites.

In a store like mine that does pretty significant volume you are going to see some pretty strange behaviors by customers in the process of buying their beer, wine, and spirits. One of my pet peeves (of which I honestly have too many) is customers who would rather not ask a member of staff but would rather search around the interior of the beer cooler (or even the back of the store) looking for their product. I also often get asked; will this beer go bad if I let it get warm? I tell people that unless they are going to get the beer very hot they won't change the flavor of the beer. Light is a bigger source of off flavors than heat you would find comfortable. This blog post has given me an idea I can't do too many of these, since I am sure to offend a customer eventfully, and no amount of youtube fun is worth that drama. Post your opinion should I do wine and spirit strangeness or should I private these videos and only link to them here to spare the sensibilities of my c...

In this six hundred page tome you encounter an encyclopedic examination of the entirety of french winemaking in the year 2000. One might think that that wouldn't be enough room to cover all of france but Mr. Coates does a great job. The book is divided into eleven sections with forty maps The maps are some of the best I have seen covering the wine regions of france and they also show the locations of famous estates. One of the ways I like to solidify my knowledge of wine regions is to trace maps so that I can really spend some time getting immersed in the geography of the region.