Wine Down Wednesday, Thirsty Thursday – you have heard them all. Fun slogans and events that add a little zest to the week and more importantly, LIFE! We started a Wine Down Wednesday traditional of our own with some good friends about 18 months ago. I went along with it at first because I knew Kelly wanted (and needed) to be more social. I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea. Boy how wrong I was! This has turned out to be a great, fun and much needed by all of us (me included) weekly traditional. It is nothing short of a disaster if we have to miss a week and we have had to miss some – Covid, Schedules, Covid and more Covid. But over the 18 months, 78 weeks we haven’t missed many!
The Story
For us, Wine Down Wednesday is a GREAT Vegan meal made by some guy named the Average Vegan Dad and a couple bottles of good to great wine. Our very first Wine Down Wednesday was interesting for sure. Our friends were not wine drinkers – well they were, but they liked sweet red wines or basically hard grape juice. We are not exactly sophisticated wine snobs, but we know a good red when we see one and taste one. We agreed to bring a red and they would bring a red. I think we brought an Orin Swift wine – maybe 8 Years in a Desert. A wine we really like and we thought would be a good place to start. We began the evening each drinking the wine we brought and soon our friends were eager to share their communion wine with us. Now, before you think I am being rude or judgey, which I know I am, this first night has been talked and laughed about many times. And, fast forward to today, they may rank higher on the wine snob meter than we do!
The Wine!
Our friends have developed quite a palette for good, red wines. The best news is that for the most part, we all like similar wines. Wine Down Wednesday has allowed us to try all types of red wines. No, we don’t always pair the wines with our meal. Our goal is to enjoy some good wine, have meaningful discussions and then eat amazing food. We typically buy 18 to 24 bottles at a time and we love to experiment with different grapes, blends and regions around the world. We look for solid wines, we look for fun wines and sometimes we look for something a little funky and unique and we keep everything well under $50.00 (most of the time). We are lucky and have found a couple smaller wine shops that help us with our selections. We keep a history of what we have tried and what we like and we try to expand our selection from there. From this, I am adding a Wine Review to the Average Vegan Dad website. Nothing too serious, but I want to share our experience and thoughts on all the different wines we try. Hopefully you will find this a nice addition to the website. I have also considered a weekly Wine Down Wednesday Menu – Highlight the food and recipes plus the wine selections. Thoughts?
The Food and More
While the wine is a BIG part of the evening, for me, the opportunity to expose others to great cruelty free vegan food is something I just love. Our friends are the perfect people to expose this to – they are open minded and very interested in all the benefits of vegan food. We discuss health, love and protection of animals, the environment and most importantly that you don’t have to sacrifice a great dining experience to eat vegan. That was and still is the challenge for me and one that I gladly accept. I want the food to be the star of the evening. Everyone should walk away not saying “that was a great vegan meal”, but that was a Great Meal and one that I would love to eat again and again. I love to end the meal with either, “I could sell this s#$@” or who made this and can you believe it’s vegan? Yes I could and yes it is!
While this blog and website are really just a passion project for me, I would love to be able to talk to a larger audience and expose them to all the great vegan recipes and foods that are available. Yes there is a learning curve, yes it MAY take a bit longer to prepare, but isn’t eating well, eating healthy, protecting animals from abuse and protecting our planet worth a little investment in time?
Have a nice glass of red and think about that.
CHEERS!
Thanks for sharing.
You are very welcome – Thanks for reading!