About Me
I’m Kirsten — a retired sommelier with a camera, a passport, and a slightly obsessive need to know what everyone is drinking and why.
For years, I wrote a wine blog called The Armchair Sommelier. I went to wine school, became a Certified Sommelier, earned the Diploma in Wine & Spirits from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust in London, tasted thousands of wines, and acquired enough knowledge about soil composition to become genuinely tiresome at dinner parties.
And I loved it.
Then I got COVID (original COVID) and lost my sense of smell and taste for months. When they finally came back, wine didn’t taste the same.
This was, professionally speaking, a real bummer.
Then my husband, Ken, and I retired early and got on a bunch of planes.
We’re not full-time travelers. We have a house, two adult children, a labrador retriever, and a cat. But we travel as much as we can, while we can.
Ken gravitates toward military history, castles, and anything involving an unreasonable number of stairs. I gravitate toward local markets and grocery stores.
He goes off to climb something. I investigate the liquor aisle. It’s a good system.
Eventually I rediscovered cocktails and spirits, and realized I was becoming less interested in what was in the glass and more interested in why.
Why do Italians have very inflexible ideas about which drinks belong before dinner and which belong after dinner? Why do Germans clink glasses, make eye contact, and say Prost like there are consequences for getting it wrong? Why do the Japanese pour sake for everyone except themselves?
Drinks, it turns out, are rarely just drinks. They’re history, agriculture, religion, geography, politics, ritual, and occasionally a terrible idea involving a shot glass.
Somewhere along the way, I started writing little travelogues on Facebook, mostly for my mom. She loved the stories — particularly the parts where things went wrong.
She died in 2024. I miss her. And traveling without knowing she’s waiting for the next story still feels strange.
But I know what she’d tell me: Go. Write it down. Take the picture.
So I do.
The Flask Half Full is where those stories live.
Not the ten things you absolutely must do in Paris. The internet has that covered.
I’m interested in what the brochure leaves out: the underground communist toilet. The woman named Snow White pouring plum brandy in Croatia. The Japanese taxi driver in white gloves whose seats are covered in lace doilies. The things your guide tells you after you convince them to join you for a drink.
Travel, drinks, culture, history, photography — and the occasional absurdity.
If you’d like to see more of my travel and street photography, you can find my photography portfolio here.
Because the best stories rarely make it into the brochure.
Cheers,
Kirsten
DipWSET · Certified Sommelier · Photographer · Based in the DC area
