Free Wine Tastings, and an update on Caviar Tasting in Seattle...

Some of us like wine. Some of us love wine. And then there are those of us whose veins are flowing with J. Lohr Seven Oaks Cabernet 2003 instead of blood. You know who you are.

While crawling the web, I found an authoritative list of local wine tastings at http://www.seattledining.com/wine/tastings/index.asp. Of the twenty wine merchants and cellars featured on the list, eighteen offer free tastings. Renton, Burien, Kirkland, Redmond, Des Moines, and Bellevue are some of the cities besides Seattle that are represented here. The list is by no means exhaustive; some of my favorite local wineries aren't listed here, like The Grape Adventure in Kent, http://www.thegrapeadventure.com/index.html, which offers a tasting of "3 New Wines for 3 Dollars" every Thursday and Saturday. Do any Frugalicious Readers have suggestions for their favorite wine tasting venue?

Speaking of fish eggs...some readers have asked about free caviar tasting in Seattle. I believe I started this rumor, based on a foggy memory of an article I read in Seattle Magazine some years ago about scoring free gourmet food samples in the Emerald City. The caviar in question was at the Seattle Caviar Company, http://www.caviar.com/cgi-bin/shop.pl. Well, Frugalicious Readers, I checked into it, and no, they do not offer free caviar tastings. What they do offer are $10 tastings on Saturdays from 11 to 5 PM, and for an extra $9.50 you get a 3 oz. pour of premium champagne to complement the flavor. I'm not sure that this exactly qualifies as frugal for the scope of this blog, but it could be classified as a "frugal splurge." Now there's an oxymoron for you...