Wine Review: Luscious Vines Coco Tropical

I thought I'd try something a little different - a wine review from a layman's point of view.

While I have a history with wines, I'm going to start with a wine I just tried for the first time yesterday: Luscious Vines Coco Tropical.

The back of the bottle reads as follows:
"Luscious Vines Coco Tropical is a delicious drink with added flavor of fruit and coconuts and mixed with premium wine."

I don't know if it's because Spring is in the air, my taste buds have changed, or what, but I am digging this light, tropical (and very affordable) wine. When I take a sip, I feel like I'd eating an icee of a hot summer day. It has a refreshing taste that puts me in a sipping and relaxing mood. Does that even make sense? When I drink it, I don't want to guzzle it, I want to savor it slowly. I usually fill a wine glass up less than 50% of the way (sometimes it's even just at 24%), and it took me a half hour just to get through that little bit because I seem to be enjoying the actual experience of drinking the wine, and its flavors. I don't know if it's the island girl in me, but I love it's mixture of coconut and fruit flavors (almost like a high class, lightweight sangria).

Last night I paired this drink with some Tilapia fish balls (homemade), and sweet potato fries. I love fish and usually fill myself to the brim when I make it, but I ate a small portion of food, a quarter of a glass of the wine, and I was full.

Another cool thing is this wine is local - Washingtonville, NY... I might just have to take a trip out to the vineyard.

Product Big Up!

My name is Shak... and I am a recovering product junkie.

I didn't start out this way, but my hair is special in that it has split personality.  Sometimes, it wants shea butter.  Sometimes, it wants aloe.  Sometimes, it wants to be blown straight. Sometimes it says "ahh fugg it, we just gonna curly up and chill!"  As a result of such Sybil-like behavior I have had to sample various hair care and styling products over the years.

Now, I am not a big fan of straight hair.  Even when I was younger and had my hair permed, I would always style it so that it was big to the point where it would defeat the purpose of getting my hair chemically straightened.  So although I am a big: Cree Summer/ Freddie Different World Tracee Ellis Ross hair, there are times, when I feel like taming the beast.

Back in the day, I used to press with a curling iron, hot comb, flat iron, whatever.  Now, I will use a hair dryer and maybe even roller set under a hood dryer. So one day I went into a hair supply store and ask for a little advice on how to blow out my hair to an almost press-like state without perming it, and La Senorita pointed me to this:

Pantene Extra Straight Comb-in-Cream (keeps hair straighter for up to 18 hours).  Ok, so I used this thing a few times back when I was trying everything to change up my style.  It was also at a point when my multiple personality hair was PMSing.  Since I'd chopped off half my hair 6 months ago (and regained almost all of the length I cut back), my mop has been healthier than ever.  I've adopted a less is more attitude about products and have even gotten rid of a bunch of stuff.  I pressed my hair once in the past 6 months (and then immediately washed it out because I couldn't get with the flat hair look).  I even stopped using a blow dryer over the summer months, and the times when I have used a dryer recently, it's been once a week and on a medium heat setting.  So I got a lot of virgin hair on my head that been in protective styles - for the most part - for over 6 months.  Well, this weekend I did a quick wet and set and wanted to stretch my curls out a bit without applying any heat, and I saw the bottle of Pantene.  So I tried it.  And. I LIKED IT!  Now I'm in the second day of doing a braid set.  Today was a little scary because I haven't worn my hair out in months and wasn't sure if it would cooperate or not, but with the absence of humidity, my curly set mop stayed in place for the most part, and has gotten me a bit excited about doing something different from my usual protective styling, so thank you Pantene Extra Straight comb-in-cream for hooking a sista up.  Big ups!