WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), currently engaged in the political fight of her life, has spent much of the summer drilling down on issues of local concern to New Hampshire voters. But it's the first term Republican's work on international issues that may ultimately determine her fate.
Ayotte, who must stave off a Republican primary challenge in September before facing New Hampshire's Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan later this fall, has spent her five years in the Senate crafting an impressive foreign policy resume. A member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who is married to an Iraq War veteran, Ayotte (48) is now regarded as one of the GOP's leading neo-conservative voices.
Wine tasting events range from casual affairs to intense mergers of international commerce and science. At casual tastings, there's a convivial spirit that makes room for compatible souls to mingle. Some tasters are merely interested in the magical elixir's simplest charms, while others consider a wine's ancient, multi-sensory stimuli of greater satisfaction. As one person opines with a yea or nay to a sample sip, a more articulate taster notes appearance, character and potential suitability for aging, given a wine's regional affiliation and vintage. Buzzwords wafting about include aromatic, density and mineralogy. Those gathered tend to agree, whatever the prose, or the pursuit, the seductive language of wine has been the fascination of mankind, for all time.
Historically, a long standing real-estate tax of sorts has existed on wines heavily dependent on a pedigreed continental provenance. Challenging the levy, blind tastings of wine have recruited the most sophisticated palates of connoisseurs and sommeliers to evaluate a vintage's expressions. From those tastings, experts pass judgment on samples without bias in the intoxicatingly competitive business of consumption. Accordingly, wine rankings are in flux with delightful surprises shattering cases of old prejudice by the bottle and offering new opportunities to explore the entire world of wine's polycultural nuances without breaking the bank.
