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!

That’s right, tomorrow is Open That Bottle Night TEN (see previous blog post).  We’ll be on the road so we couldn’t have our annual event, which would have been our third year, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have something fun to open tomorrow night.  I have a little surprise for Shelley, but, where WILL we be?  Twin Falls?  Idaho Falls?  Logan or Provo, Utah?  I’m guessing it will be somewhere in between these points as we make our way down to Southern California.  Wouldn’t it be great if we were going down to wine country?  Ah, but alas, we are going down to pick up her father and visit our kids.  My guess is we’ll probably be in Salt Lake City.  Hmmm, they probably won’t appreciate us having a special bottle of vino, will they?

Oh well.  So here’s the deal, you will have to wait to find out what we’re going to open tomorrow night.  I went into our wine cellar looking for just the right wine but all we have are reds down there and I didn’t think we’d finish a whole bottle by ourselves (I’m not about to let a special bottle of red go to waste by not drinking all of it!) so I’ve opted for a white.  And that’s all I’m telling you–for now anyway.  The next post you’ll real ALLLLL about it!

Last night we had a marvelous pork tenderloin and we opened a bottle of 2005 Sagelands Merlot.  Sagelands is from the Columbia Valley in Washington, located in Walla Walla.  This was a delight.  I got raspberries on the nose and even some terrior.  The taste was very mellow and Shelley commented on the tannins.  It went very well with the pork.  Shelley made this wonderful raspberry sauce and it all paired very well with the wine.

Well, tomorrow will be a long day but we’ll have our special bottle of wine to look forward to when we reach our destination, wherever that might be.  I hope you have pulled a special bottle for you to open yourself and share it with somebody or somebody’s special.