Posts tagged with 'California Wines'

Ultimate Blog Party 2009 and Affordable (Decent) Wine

  • Posted on March 20, 2009 at 11:28 am

OK, well, I’ve been thrown for a loop…TWICE!  Pull up a chair and get comfortable–this is a long one.

Loop Throwing #1:

I was just making the finishing touches on this post when it was brought to my attention a HUGE one week BASH of a party!  From two twin sisters who started the site Five Minutes For Mom, comes the Ultimate Blog Party 2009 which is about building online friendships and relationships and it starts TODAY and runs until the 27th.

It’s very simple to join the fun (if I could do it ANYbody can!) and there are lots of ways you can get involved–from simply reading their post, to publishing your own party post on your blog (which is what I’m doing right NOW and you’re a part of it!) and signing one of the Mr. Linky link lists near the end of their post.  There are even prizes!  I LOVE prizes!  There are so many cool prizes to be won at this years Ultimate Blog Party 2009 but my top three are:

#70  One case of Cinnamon Churros (yum) provided by Rudolph Foods; #89  $100 Gift Card to HomeGoods provided by HG Openhouse; #119  2 Life Journals (one for me and one for a friend) to guide Bible reading and study provided by Mom’s Toolbox.

And if these top three picks are already chosen, I’d love any of the following:  19, 21, 22, 26 and 91 or anything related to young women as my daughters are 16 and 19.

There will be so many new relationships built after this week of blogging frenzy.  I’ve put a cute little Ultimate Blog Party 2009 button on the left just above my blog roll.

Now I know this site and this party is basically for Mom’s but they make it very clear that Dad’s, and anybody else, for that matter, can join.  So, for my party post, I’m sticking with what this site is dedicated to doing and that is teaching people about wine from the ground up.  As I’ve stated before, I, Phil Anderson, am certainly no wine expert but I do love wine and am enjoying learning as much as possible about it.  As the subject of wine can seem very intimidating to people, my goal is to teach about wine in very simple terms.

I know Mom’s (as well as Dad’s) around the globe work very hard in raising children so that they’ll become an integral part of society.  I myself am a father and I’m very proud of my daughters.  I know at the end of the day a little peace and solitude (sometimes VERY little) is sought and when that time comes it can really help to have it include a nice glass of wine.

So today’s post is about a wine that I feel can be a great everyday wine.  As we read and hear about seemingly every hour of every day, household budgets have taken a hit so people have had to find ways of trimming their  costs.  So how do you trim your wine cost without effecting quality?

That brings me to my–

Loop Throwing #2:

You know when you buy a very inexpensive bottle of wine just so that you can enjoy something at some point of the evening?  You don’t need to break the bank and you can’t just coninue to drop 10-20 bucks for a bottle of wine every night.  It’s not financially prudent.  So you go for something under ten bucks…ok, sometimes even under FIVE bucks.

Everyone (well, most people who drink wine, anyway) has heard of Two Buck Chuck, Charles Shaw Winery’s low end, “everyday” wine.  We tried that and weren’ t very impressed.  The Chardonnay was flat and the Merlot sweet.

So, while shopping at Walmart (I know, I know, but don’t get politically correct on me, now), Shelley saw an Oak Leaf Vineyards Chardonnay and Merlot for, get this, $2.97 each.  Suffice it to say, we weren’t expecting ANYTHING, let alone, nothing much.

We opened the bottle of Chardonnay, poured, toasted (stay tuned for what our tratitional daily toast is and how it came to be in the next General Wine Thoughts post) and tasted.  What came next was, well surprising, to say the least.  It tasted pretty good!

The Chardonnay had very little, if any, oak and it was crisp and clean.  Most inexpensive Chardonnay’s have an off smell followed by an off taste which leads to an off opinion.  This had a hint of on off smell, just at the finish, but was rather pleasant.

The Merlot was not quite as good, but still, not bad at all.  Not much of anything on the nose.  You expect some rich berries when you smell a Merlot.  The taste was also pleasant.

The label didn’t give much information about Oak Leaf Vineyards except that they’re located in Ripon and Livermore (two cities?), California.  I did find out that they brought home the Gold at the 2008 Florida State Fair.  Both of these wines were non-vintage so they can use grapes from many vintages.  That also means the wine will likely be very consistent.

To end this post, I would like to encourage you to pick up a botttle of one of these Oak Leaf Vineyards wines at your local Walmart and give it a go.  I think you’ll be surprised.  And if nothing else, it will give you a little “me” time after giving so much of “your” time, although deserving, to your kids.

Two frigid Gewurztraminer’s

  • Posted on March 10, 2009 at 10:37 pm

Well, we made it back from California in one piece.  And tonight, we also realized we’re no longer in California as it was 14 degrees outside.  Oh, I’m sorry, MINUS 14 degrees!  YIKES! 

SOOOoooooo, tonight, we will be reporting on two CALIFORNIA wines, just to bring us back into some semblance of warm, two wines we tasted over the past couple of nights, both from Firestone Vineyard, in Santa Barbara, California.  I understand at -14 degrees these will be considerably frigid Gewurztraminer’s.  As I noted before Gewurztraminer is a grape varietal that I have avoided writing about, but only because of the name.  It is a tricky one to say AND to write. 

 

Firestone Vineyard is the source of our favorite Sauvignon Blanc.  We visited the winery a few years back when we visited the Santa Barbara Wine region in the Santa Ynez Valley.  It was a wonderful trip and the memories from that trip surface all the time.

 

We started out this tasting by opening up a 2005 Gewurztraminer.  It was somewhat effervescent and Shelley was surprised by how dry it was.  I thought it was very smooth and mellow with a hint of flowers on the nose and mandarin orange in the taste.  It had a tart finish. 

 

When we opened the 2007 Gewurztraminer from Firestone, Shelley thought it was much closer to what a classic Gewurztraminer should taste like.  She said it was sweeter than the 2005.  It caused her to think out loud that maybe the 2005 was over the hill, or at the very least heading that way.  Certainly the 2007 was crisper than the 2005 but I thought both were good. 

 

We have never had a bad bottle of wine from Firestone.  I don’t know why you don’t read more about Firestone Vineyards and the quality wine they produce.  They consistently make good wine at very reasonable prices.  The longer they make them, the longer we will drink them.

 

Until the next post, happy tasting!

A Couple Simple Wines on a Simple Night Out

  • Posted on January 24, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Hello, fellow wine drinkers. Oh, I’m just so excited! I’m writing this just as the Washington Huskies beat #11 UCLA by nine in a Pac 10 basketball showdown. Now they sit on top of the Pac 10.

So on to what this is supposed to be. Today’s post will include some thoughts about two different wines we drank last night while at dinner at a cute little place near Coeur d’Alene called Kynrede Café. Shelley likened it to a restaurant she absolutely loves in Orange County called The Hobbit.

Shelley ordered a glass of La Palma Sauvignon Blanc from the Cachapoal Valley of Chile. It was a 2007 vintage and estate grown. It was everything a good Sauvignon Blanc should be. Shelley thought it was a somewhat effervescent. I thought it had a very grassy nose and it was very light.

I ordered a 2004 Cambria Chardonnay from their Katherine’s Vineyard. This estate bottle Chardonnay is from the Santa Maria Valley in Santa Barbara County, California. Surprisingly, it had virtually no nose. However, it tasted much better than the nose with light oak, somewhat toasty, very smooth and mellow. Shelley thought had a slightly perfumy nose and had a light butter and oak taste to it. Just a perfect amount of oak in this Chardonnay.

We have visited this winery before and the people there are very nice. Katherine’s Vineyard is named for the owner’s eldest daughter. I remember sneaking out to where all the oak casks were when we visited. We even bought our most very favorite wine opener at the Cambria winery but it recently broke and we’re in the process of finding another one just like it. This opener is flat and has a nifty little foil cutter on one end that opens up when you need to use it and the cork screw on the other end. It’s very small, light, simple and easy to use. But, since it’s made of plastic, it can break when trying to pry a cork out of an older bottle of wine and that’s just what happened.

Shelley ordered Chicken Marcella and realized the Sauvignon Blanc probably wouldn’t pair too well with it. I ordered the Coconut Prawns and I faced a similar dilemma with my Chardonnay. What WOULD we do?
Well, we did just that and pulled the old switcheroo. Her chicken paired very well with the Chardonnay and the Sauvignon Blanc was delicious with my prawns. Of course, we both got to taste the other dish as well. All in all it was a very enjoyable meal, especially when you look at the per glass prices of the wine, $4.25 for the Chilean Sauvignon Blanc and $5.75 for the Chardonnay.

As always, thank you for reading, and now go drink up!

2009 Inauguration Day tasting notes

  • Posted on January 20, 2009 at 3:58 pm
What a day! President Obama was sworn into office and the whole nation, including ourselves, were fixated on the events as they unfolded. As I looked at their luncheon menu I noticed they chose all California wines to pair with their meal. A 2007 Duckhorn Sauvignon Blanc with the first coarse, a 2005 Goldeneye Pinot Noir to go with the second coarse and a Korbel Natural “Special Inaugural Cuvee” sparkling wine (they errantly called it a California Champagne) for the third, and last, course. Go to White House Menu to see what food they paired these wines with or try Duckhorn Gift Set to buy the first two wines in a wooden gift box and enjoy what all the dignitaries at the luncheon enjoyed.

A side note, Shelley’s all-time favorite Merlot is made by Duckhorn. We have a couple bottles that we laid down some years back, one of them a 25th anniversary bottle. Perhaps we should think about bringing one of those up soon to enjoy, yes?

Tonight we celebrated this historic day by finishing off that wonderful lasagna from Sunday night and we opted to try a blend with it—an unusual blend from Oxford Landing from South Australia called GSM, which stands for Grenache, Shiraz, Mourvedre. I told you it was unusual. Oxford Landing has been around since 1958 and this 2006 GSM was a blend of 47% Grenache, 43% Shiraz and 10% Mourvedre.

Shelley thought she noticed pomegranate in the nose but changed that to, get this, concord grapes. How often do you get anything grape from a wine? Everything BUT grapes, right? I tasted cherries and Shelley added that they were sour cherries, at that. I couldn’t argue. A very smooth, well rounded red wine with virtually no tannins and didn’t taste as young as it should have.

We opened our evening by opening a bottle of Robert Mondavi Chardonnay from 2007. OK, nothing mind blowing here. We both thought the same thing after looking, smelling and tasting: Oak. There was so much oak in this Chardonnay that you couldn’t really taste that it was Chardonnay. That might explain why we each only had a glass and the rest sits in the bottle in the fridge. Perhaps we’ll try and finish it another night. It used to be that you could count on anything from Mondavi to be, at least, good, but not anymore. How sad.

And that’s what I have for you tonight. Until next time, drink up and enjoy!

Wine and conference championships

  • Posted on January 15, 2009 at 9:04 pm
As we near the second to the last weekend of real football (the Pro Bowl doesn’t EVEN count) I was sipping a glass of Viognier from Bridlewood Estate Winery (bridlewoodwinery.com; 1-800-467-4100) , from the Central Coast of California, Santa Ynez, and wondering, “should I predict the outcomes of these games?” The answer poured over me like the bountiful aroma of spring flowers that this Reserve Viognier sent my way: “YES, I should!”

But first, I will admit that last night we drank a Fume Blanc from Bernard Griffin, not all THAT uncommon, and it was quite good. I have to say that the Sauvignon Blanc grape that makes up a Fume Blanc just never dissapoints me, and this one was no different. The fact that this wine is under ten bucks makes it even better.

The Viognier from this evening tasted a bit more elegant, however. All I think about is springtime fragrance when I recall the nose on this wine and a very smooth taste albeit an awkward finish. Poor Shelley had a cold so she couldn’t really enjoy it and Viognier is one of her very favourites (she’s from Canada, eh, so I have to spell it that way).

Now for my predictions: Arizona will stun the world by beating the Eagles this weekend, 26-20. For the AFC, Baltimore will defeat the Steelers, 19-10. I can back up both predictions with sound football logic. The Cardinals are from the NFC West, where my Seahawks play, and so you always go with the division that YOUR team plays in even if it’s a rival of YOUR team. Loyalty. As for the other side, there is no way that I will ever root for Pittsburgh again after they beat the Seahawks in the Super Bowl a couple of years ago. Rothlis(cheese)burger is not a very good quarterback, in my opinion.

So there you go, my third post, and I even subtly mixed in sports to go with my general wine thoughts! Amazing.

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