When you’re passionate about a topic, but also want to maintain your seriousness, it’s a bit hard to sometimes buy things that are related to the subject. You don’t want to come off too much like an equivalent of a crazy cat lady. In the wine world anything outside of a bottle of wine or its necessary accessories (and sometimes an insider-y t-shirt) can sometimes fall into that borderline kitschy, if not all the way kitschy, category.  But every now and then, something comes along and perks me up. Today was one of those days, thanks to grapefriend​.

Posts on tumblr, instagram and twitter directed me to their Olive & Poppy obsession.  And now, I think I’m obsessed, too.

For example, this tote-bag, includes an interior pocket to hold your wine upright and a key chain which Olive & Poppy suggests using as a “corkscrew keeper.” The site claims it’s “the perfect size to take to the farmer’s market or to stuff with cheese, bread and a blanket.” Yes, please.

But what I’ve really fallen in love with, are these terroir necklaces that include little oval plates with maps of some popular California terroirs. My favorite is the Sonoma/Carneros map, since Carneros was the first AVA my budding palate was able to quickly identify. And well, who doesn’t love Sonoma?

To see more from Olive and Poppy, whose entire line of products focuses on California wine country, check out their website. They even sell gift certificates, in case you know someone who might like to purchase something (hint, hint).

We’re so far into summer right now that people are already talking about how it’s almost over (la la la I can’t hear them la la la). So I don’t have to tell anybody paying attention to wine that the past few months have been all about drinking pink. The public’s thirst for delicious dry rosé has increased immensely over the past few years. And that’s a good thing!

(Some of my favorite rosé wines/ Photo by me)

On a hot summer day by the pool, or at a warm evening BBQ, the mix of fruit and crispness found inside a glass of rosé is the kind of quencher that people of all palates can easily agree upon. Stir that with social media and you now have hashtags like #yeswayrosé, #roséalldamnday and for the millenial men too cool to admit their preference, there’s even #brose.

But have we gone too far? Just as the stigma for drinking pink wines is finally wearing off, is a new one forming that could scare away the serious wine drinker? I don’t think so – but here are a few examples of the budding culture (cult, perhaps?) pushing its way through the summer season:

Two girls from Brooklyn have turned #yeswayrosé into a lifestyle brand – touting t-shirts, nail polish and keychains.

It’s extended to their own Summer Water juice. Even Vogue  took notice. (And yes, I’ve certainly contributed to the cause. Who wouldn’t want to subscribe to feeling like you’re floating in a pool all day?)

But they’re not the only social media stars to branch into winemaking for the benefit of fueling the rosé trend. Bloomberg interviewed two guys who are capitalizing on the trend, too: Meet ‘White Girl Rosé,’ the Wine-on-Demand From ‘The Fat Jew’ and ‘White Girl Problems’

And lest you think only women are the target of such trends, 2015 has brought us the summer of brosé. Details Magazine helped spell things out in June with this profile.

Like his counterpart, the much-discussed female whiskey drinker, the rosé bro is inaugurating a freer, more egalitarian world of gender-fluid beverage consumption.

Soon after, writer Felix Salmon (who I always associated with his smart financial tweets) continued the call for men to drink pnk:

Rosé is the ultimate guy drink. It’s dry, it’s unpretentious, it goes with everything: it’s like beer without the constant trips to the bathroom. It’s the perfect drink for any laid-back dude. Next time you see a group of bros dispensing with the Bud Lights and opting instead for a bottle of something pink and Provençal, your only job is to go find yourself a glass. They know exactly what they’re doing.

As I asked earlier, what does this mean for the serious wine drinker? In my opinion, it’s a good thing. It’s a chance to convince my non-wine-drinking friends to imbibe, and a perfect reminder that wine has a light-hearted fun side that’s absolutely perfect for summer.

I once took an hour-long Riedel wine tasting class, which gave us an opportunity to taste the same wine in different-shaped glasses.

From that moment on, I was convinced that proper stemware was crucial to getting the most out of a wine. I filled my own cabinet with Riedel glasses in four different shapes and  Crate and Barrel knock-offs of Zalto glasses. (In a perfect world, I’d just have Zaltos. The delicate but sturdy stems are enough to make me swoon.)

But every now and then I’ll stray. I have some vintage rose-color upside-down cone shape champagne glasses, which I discovered shows off the crispness and acidity of dry rosé beautifully. Yet it’s probably not the perfect glass since its shape lets the aromas escape. For me, the fun in drinking from them over takes that: If looking through rose-color glasses provides a wonderful view of the world, shouldn’t drinking from them let you get a wonderful taste of the world, too?

Today, I’ve discovered a different kind of glass in my cabinet and it’s making for a lovely sipping vessel on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Drinking from small juice glasses may be traditional in Italy, but something never felt right about doing that here. I tried once and the thickness of the lip made for an awful experience. But as I was putting away some glasses and reaching for a white wine glass to drink some leftover Chenin Blanc, I came upon these pretty little juice glasses a friend brought back from her trip to the Corning Museum in New York. The design is reminiscent of fiddleheads or perhaps some green peas or grass.

As I poured the wine, something just felt right. Besides helping with portion control – which is smart for a Sunday afternoon when there are still chores to be done – I found myself sipping a little slower out of it.  The tart fruit and acid of the wine held up just as well as when I tasted it the day before in a traditional wine glass. And just like using the vintage champagne glasses for rosé, it brought me pure joy.