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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, July 15, 2009

RAISE A GLASS
How to tell if you're a wine geek


By Cynthia Fenner

You know you are a wine geek if you can answer yes to 10 or more of the following:

• You go to a restaurant and look at the wine list and chose your wine before you look at the menu and chose your entrée.

• You carry a wine key around with you.

• You have snuck a bottle of wine into the movie theater.

• You have filled up your home wine refrigerator and have cases in storage with Kim and Liane through The Wine Stop.

• You plan your vacations around regions known for great wine.

• You are on a first-name basis with Sky, Ian, Cheryl Lynn, Jocelyn, Chuck, Roberto, and other local wine experts and sommeliers.

• You subscribe to several wine magazines.

• You have several styles of Riedel wine glasses and are not afraid to tote them to events and restaurants that you know don't have proper glassware.

• You know all the BYOB restaurants in Honolulu by heart and lament when they get their liquor licenses.

• You get so many allocated offers from wineries after being on their wait list that you can't afford to pick them all up.

• You know who Gary Vaynerchuk is.

• Your T-shirts have logos of wineries or cute wine sayings.

• When at a function that is only serving plonk, you stick to drinking water.

• You know what plonk is.

• You know that blind tasting does not require a blindfold, and you know what double blind means.

• Your friends and relatives give you wine or wine-related items for your birthday and holidays.

• You got all the jokes in "Sideways."

• Your apron reads "I cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food."

• You walk into the local wine store and the salespeople say, "Hello, Mr. or Ms. ... "

• You walk into any wine store on the island and the salespeople say "Hello, Mr. or Ms. ... "

• You spend more than 10 minutes trying to decide what wine to pull to take to a dinner party.

• You wear dark-colored clothes to tasting events.

• You know what the acronyms of HASR and SWAM are.

• You always have a cold bottle of champagne ready because you just never know.

• You get weekly e-mails from www.LocalWineEvents.com.

• You have your cellar inventoried and know exactly where that bottle of 2000 Chateau La Fleur is located.

• You plan your nuptials at a winery.

• You read this entire column.