I was given a bottle of the 2017 Austin Hope Cabernet Sauvignon from one of our senior leaders where I work. He and his wife really enjoy this wine and thought I would too. Austin Hope is from the Paso Robles region along the California Central Coast. When I first opened this wine, it had a fruit on the nose and offered hints of tobacco and brown sugar. I enjoyed a taste then, but it is excellent when it has a chance to breathe for an hour or more. You can then really taste the black cherry, cocoa, spice, and oak. I paired it with pizza and that meal didn’t do it justice as the salt content took away from the wine which surprised me. This is a relatively complex wine, so can pair well with steak, chicken, some rich dishes, and even on its own but maybe not with high salt dishes. Thank you, Scott! I would recommend this wine (Thanksgiving is coming up!!) and you can find it at Total Wines and some grocery stores for around $45.00 per bottle. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Yeah I picked a wine again for the graphics on the bottle. I chose the 2017 Phantom Chardonnay because we’re nearing Halloween. Bogle Vineyards makes this wine. I enjoyed it as is a medium oak Chardonnay with some hints of pear and apple. On the second night of having a glass (and yes it does take me more than one evening to drink a bottle of wine), I turned to the other side of the label and found that if I downloaded their app, I could see some spooky stuff. What can I say…I’m a sucker in the name of science. Once you download the app, you then line up your phone camera to the bottle and it turns into a compass. Once you see the compass, you move the camera around to line up the needle and it “opens” to a spooky scene. And no…I wasn’t consuming something stronger than Chardonnay. Look at the picture below and there is my proof. It was pretty cool. I believe they have different scenes on their other bottles too. You can find this wine at Tom Thumb and Target for around $17 per bottle.
You must try this Cab! It is complex with some fruit undertones but in a subtle way. It’s slight everything but enough of everything to be a really good complement to many foods. Hints of cherry, wood and slight chocolate. Yeah I just typed all of those words. In reading them now, they just spell out S N O B. ?
I enjoyed it at Al Biernat’s North Dallas, but you can find it in some Total Wines for $50 per bottle.
Actually, that’s not really the case. I was in Toronto this week for work and had the opportunity to drink some wine. Well let’s just say I make the opportunity to drink wine. We ate at an excellent Italian restaurant and the server recommended a solid Cabernet as opposed to the Barolo I’d asked about. Nonetheless, I didn’t write down the names of the wines so I failed. However, I did drink some wine at the hotel bar. We stayed at the Marriott Courtyard. I think their wines weren’t so bad, but I don’t know that they know how to store them. I tried their Apothic Red and didn’t enjoy it at all, although have in the past. The server recommended the Jackson-Triggs Merlot. It was good, but it wasn’t great or what I’d think “Canada’s Most Awarded Winery” wine would be. I honestly think it wasn’t stored correctly. Compare all of that to my Saturday night back in Dallas, Texas. We were celebrating my friend’s birthday at Town Hearth restaurant. Excellent food and service. Their prime rib is shareable for three – even if I’m one of the three. Crazy crowded restaurant though. We enjoyed a bottle (or two) of the 2016 Bergstrom Cumberland Reserve Pinot Noir from Willamette Valley, Oregon. This was a slightly peppery, slight black cherry Pinot and right up my alley. Some Pinot’s from Oregon are milder, but this had a slight bite to it although a really good balance. Letting it breathe was key. 10 minutes of breathing is about the max it’s going to get at this table of six experienced wine-drinking ladies. I won’t compare the Canadian Merlot to the US – Oregon Pinot as just doesn’t make sense. Here’s my recommendation though….restaurants, hotels, bars, whatever….please make sure you store your wine right. It doesn’t have to be 55F/12.7778C (see how I went global friendly there??) but does have to be less than whatever your storage shed out back is.
Also, to correctly pronounce Willamette, my friend Heather said one thing that will keep it straight for you as she learned herself in making her way through Oregon wine country… It’s Willamette Dammit!
U S A, U S A (yeah this is why the rest of the world despises us – this blog might be evidence of that)
You can find the 2016 Bergstrom Cumberland Reserve Pinot Noir at Total Wines for $46 per bottle. You can find the Jackson-Triggs Merlot at some specialty wine stores, but can only find their Ice Wine (I’ve heard it is great) at Total Wines.
Guten Tag! I hope you have had an excellent weekend. I decided to branch out of the norm a bit. I tried the 2018 Dr. Heidemanns-Bergweiler Riesling. This is not my typical choice as Rieslings tend to be sweeter than I prefer. However, this wine varietal can really complement certain foods. The Riesling varietal of grape originated along the Rhine river Germany. A lot of excellent wines grow along the Rhine river. The Rhine is the second longest river in Europe (after the Danube) starting in Switzerland, running through Germany, Liechtenstein, Austria, France, and The Netherlands. This particular area is great for growing the grape as it tends to provide a slightly cooler climate where the grape can develop well. I tasted some slight minerality and a hint of strawberry and peach notes on the end. I enjoyed this Riesling with sushi and wasabi. Riesling is a great option when eating spicy Asian foods or citrus-based foods. It stands up well to rich fish or poultry dishes and stronger cheeses as well. This particular Riesling was $18.00 at Total Wines so worth giving a try for a wine you might not normally pick up when thinking of wines to pair with a richer food. Hab eine großartige Woche. (Have a great week!!) Ich bin ein nerd. Thank you Google translate.
Good evening all! I enjoy trying new wines and, oftentimes,
bottles are what sell me on a wine. I can read the back or look it up on Google
or Vivino to get more detail, but what captures my attention is a unique label.
I’m a hopeless victim of good marketing. The label is what drove me to purchase
the 2015 Tenshən White Wine from the California Central Coast. First of all,
the upside-down “e” represented in the label is called a schwa character. You
can tap into the Microsoft cavern of fonts to obtain it. Get this…you type a
U+0259 then press the Alt key while pressing the X key. The schwa in English is
a vowel representing “uh”. Second of all, that was exactly what I uttered when
I took my first sip of this wine. I enjoy a relatively heavy oak wine whether or
not it is a Chardonnay, a Cabernet or even a Merlot. This was too much oak for
me. It was oak-based and complex with some hints of apple. It was almost too
complex on its own. However, I then drank this wine with some spicy foods and
enjoyed it. The spice was a kick and it kicked back.
The makers of this wine must be extremely cerebral. The label is either a depiction of a maze or a person’s brain. Both of those would represent how drinking this wine can be. You’re either hitting a wall and turning around to then find another open pathway to enjoyment or your neurons themselves are running through a damaged synapse and having to reroute due to damage on the path. This wine caused tenshən in my taste buds and brain. This isn’t a drinking wine for the sake of just drinking it in my opinion. You can find it at Total Wines for approximately $17.00 per bottle.
Hello All – I hope you have had an excellent Independence Day holiday and great weekend! I enjoyed some time with friends and was able to watch some fireworks at a little place called The Rusty Dog Ranch. It lives up to its name because the owners, Jeff and Michelle, take in, foster and try to help all sorts of stray dogs (and all animals) and have a heart for giving. While there, we enjoyed a great cook out with some refreshing adult beverages along with it. We had hamburgers and hot dogs which are oftentimes paired with red wines or beer. We went out on a limb and enjoyed a great Rosé that hit the spot on a hot Fourth of July. We enjoyed the 2018 Château La Tour de l’Évêque from the Côtes de Provence region in France. Nothing says ‘Merica like Château La Tour de l’Évêque. If you are looking to try a Rosé, then I’d recommend really anything from the Côtes de Provence region. I have enjoyed a few from that region and have never been disappointed. This Rosé had hints of strawberry, honey and a slight citrus taste. It is just slightly sweet. This would probably pair very well with sushi and some spicy Asian foods and I will have to try that sometime. I would recommend this wine just to drink on a patio with friends as well. It’s a blessing to forget all of the rhetoric spoken by all political at times. America is one of the few countries in the world where you can drink a French wine while eating beef and pork, blend together in kinship, even with divergent opinions and backgrounds, and blow s*** up. God Bless America!!
Happy Sunday!! I hope your weekends went well and you enjoyed some down time (wine down time included…shameless attempt there). I want to start this blog by saying that no matter how bad a day you have and how little you have in your refrigerator to eat, you should never take it out on the wine. That said, I had a stupendously bad day this past Thursday and didn’t have any food in the refrigerator. I opened my 2014 Devil’s Backbone Chardonnay while rummaging through the refrigerator and pantry. Note that if I hadn’t said it before, I like medium oak Chardonnays so this might not be for everyone. As best I can tell, it was an enjoyable oak-based wine apple and maybe pear, but take this review with a grain of salt. I paired it with Crunchy Cheetos. I don’t even want to know what the orange Cheetos powder is made of, but I didn’t let that stop me. The wine did the best it could. I didn’t. This wine can be found at Kroger for less than $20 per bottle. Here’s to the ability to plan and to stocked refrigerators everywhere.
Happy Sunday! I hope you all have had a relaxing weekend. I have been on a new diet as of late. This diet consists of high fat, some sugar and carbohydrates here and there, and little to no vegetables. It also encourages little to no exercise. This diet is keto-friendly, sugar-friendly, carb-friendly, and lazy-person friendly. It’s the Miss Congeniality of diets really. What’s odd is that I’ve gained a few pounds, but I’m thinking that’s probably just muscle. Muscle weighs more than fat you know. One of the staples of late has been pasta, including Palio’s lasagna. I paired my lasagna with the 2015 Longford Estate Vintage Reserve Pinot Noir from Monterey, California. This Pinot was light in color and finish. It did have considerable minerality to it along with cherry and maybe even strawberry tones as well. I really enjoyed the lasagna, but can’t say as much for this particular Pinot. The spicy Pinots from Napa or the mild Oregon Pinots, that are a bit smoother on the palate, are more my style. I don’t typically like those with a heavy mineral focus like this one had. It could be that my newly-formed diet of bad carbs and sugars has affected my palate. Perhaps that’s a sign to start cleaning my overall diet and palate. Lesson learned, implementation of learnings tbd. If you are interested in a more mineral-based Pinot Noir, you can find this wine at Kroger grocery stores for around $20 per bottle.
Hello – it’s been a while. That starts like an intro to an Adele song. Technically, that starts like a Stain’d song because they have a song titled It’s Been a While.
You know what you do on a Friday night when your meal planning petered out on Wednesday, you’ve had a long week and you have nothing left in the refrigerator? You order pizza and chicken wings. Let me explain my diet and how my evening went. My diet is Keto with a few bad carbs, including wine, chocolate, and a little West Texas. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Tonight went like this…I called my sushi place but they don’t deliver on Fridays. You see…I can make a sushi roll keto-friendly by unrolling the sushi roll from the rice. Guys don’t get that, but girls probably do. I had to order pizza and wings instead so thus began my further downfall.
Enough of the confession…let’s talk about wine. I opened the 2013 Groth Cabernet Sauvignon – Oakville, as part of a keto-friendly diet. I let it breathe for a bit, although could have let it open up a little more. However, it had a good level of oak, a hint of black cherry and a slightly sharp end. I should have paired it with something other than pizza and wings. It would have paired better with a good pasta dish or a good filet. I ordered the pizza and chicken wings and let myself down and I probably let Groth down. Nonetheless, I would recommend this Cabernet. You can find it in some grocery stores or Total Wines for $45 to $50 per bottle. Have a wonderful carb-filled weekend!
