quotes

For Christmas this past year I received a book called the Quotable Wine Lover. It was from my friend Misty who is also a big fan of enjoying a glass of wine. I think that now and then between reviews I'll post up a quote from the book. enjoy!

I like sweet wines. My idea has always been that when you're young, you like sweet wines; and then you get sophisticated, and you drink dry white; and then you get knowledgeable, and you drink heavy reds; and then you get old, and you drink sweet again.

~Sally Jessy Raphael, wine collector and enthusiast

2007 Chardonel

Last night we celebrated Chris's website going live, and to do that I cooked up a lobster dinner and we opened up a bottle of wine from our recent adventure.

The wine is the 2007 Chardonel from the StarView vineyard on the Shawnee Hills wine trail. As said before StarView was one of our faves. Even the labels, which were designed by a local artist were our favorites!

Chardonel is a dry white wine similar to a nice chardonnay, although it doesn't have that dry after bite to it. That's because the Chardonel grape is a hybrid of the chardonnay grape and a grape called the seyval. Seyval grapes are also grown in the So IL region.

We devoured this bottle with our dinner and supplemented with another wine that was already open and a few weeks old. I won't review that one b/c I think it was past it's prime. The Chardonel was delicious, it was dry enough for the chilly weather and yet springy enough that it was hard not to guzzle. I'd buy this again, and recommend dry white wine lovers to at least taste it if they're near the winery.

PLEASE STOP YELLING AT ME!

Miranda Life Lesson #2: A hangover on expensive wine is similar to a hangover on cheap wine. True story.

2006 Lust Zinfandel

I needed to ship a box of wine home for Christmas for my alcoholic Illinois friends. So, I selected the Michael-David winery in Lodi, California because a) it's only 12 miles away and b) dude, it's delicious! And the best part if I signed up for the wine club then I got a big discount on the case plus I'd get shipments of wine throughout the year. Consider me sold! 

This winery is known for their 7 Deadly Zins wine and their Old Vine Zins which I've become really obsessed with. The wine club I signed up for contains quarterly shipments of 2-3 bottles of red wine. This month's shipment was 2006 - Lust Zinfandel and 2007 - 7 Deadly Zins. 

I uncorked the Lust tonight, which is easy the most expensive bottle of wine I've ever bought. Yikes! But holy cow is it worth it. Consider me hooked. I can just supplement my big purchases with 2 Buck Chuck in the meantime. That's classy right? Right?

Shawnee Hills Wine Trail

Last weekend Chris and our friend CP rented a cabin in southern Illinois with the intention of hiking and hitting up the Shawnee Hills wine trail. Chris and I were down there last year and stopped by two of the wineries and had a blast. This year we were ready to taste some wine.

Illinois wines tend to be very sweet. We can't grow the same grapes that grow in California and other prime wine areas. So vineyards make do with what will grow. There are some grapes, the Chambourcin, and the Norton grapes that will grow in IL. And when a vineyard knows what it's doing great dry wines can be created. I prefer the Chambourcin wines to the Nortons. The Norton wines are very strong, bold, and dry. They would be lovely with a steak dinner. Chambourcins done well are smoother than the Norton's that I've tried. They still have a nice bold, fruity, dry flavor, just not as much bite to it. This weekend I sampled some combination wines of the two that were really wonderful as well.

There are some great wineries in southern Illinois and I found that the ones I liked it wasn't just good wine, they had great service as well. It made a huge difference when the bartender was friendly, accommodating, and really knew their wines. CP is a sweet wine drinker where as I'm a dry...if the bartender could wait on us both and recommend separates to us both it was really a good place. Two places turned out to be our faves, SkyView vineyard and Alto vineyards. Both had quality bartenders, glorious wines, a comfortable atmosphere, and didn't charge for tastings! All in all we tasted at 8 wineries, purchased 12 bottles each, each brought home 10 bottles, with for me 7 bought from our two favorite places.

My wine racks are now stocked. I'll have plenty to review over the next few weeks. And I'm really looking forward to enjoying some of the wines that I only just got a taste of over the weekend. And no I didn't just buy dry reds. I did really well mixing it up with some semi sweet whites for the upcoming spring nights.

Mirassou Pinot Noir

This isn't the first time that I'd tried the Mirassou Pinot Noir but my tastes were confirmed over the weekend when Chris, Chris, and had a couple of bottles. Yes I was in southern IL wine country this weekend, and yes we bought a couple of bottles of this. It was dinner time, we were having meaty meals that required a smooth pinot noir. Pinot grapes don't grow well in IL...so this is what we went with.

This really a decent pinot noir for it's price. It has all the right flavors and smoothness of a nice pinot. It's not quite as complex as some that I've had...but that's where the price difference comes in too. I've had Mirassou's reisling as well and I remember that being good too. Not quite the best...but still nice. So far in my list of favorite cheap pinot noirs...this comes in second. I'll blog my number one choice the next time I buy a bottle.

return of wine night/Formula 2

Last night we had our first Lost wine night since before Miranda moved to Cali. It was great, and much needed after a long week for both of us. Our friends Misty and Katrina joined us for food, wine, and Lost!

Wine night originated 3 or 4 years ago when we would go over to Miranda's apartment to watch the Sapranos. We decided that wine would be appropriate for the show and then discovered that we were the only ones that really enjoyed wine out of our group. Once the show ended we kept up our weekly tradition of drinking wine and watching whatever was on the tube at the time. Watching Lost was just a given and we would bicker about who was cuter and brainstorm about the million questions the show leaves out there. This is also where I became hooked on Top Chef and Project Runway. =)

Our methods for choosing wines aren't too far off from how I choose a wine now. By lable! Sounds corny I know...but if it has a good lable it definitely draws my eye. And over the years now I'm starting to remember which lables where good and which to stay away from. So when Theresa was over a couple weeks ago and we were in Peoria Heights at a wine shop my eye was immdiately drawn to the bottle of Handprint Merlot. The Merlot was a bit out of my price range but we got to talking to the guy that was working there and he mentioned that the zombie wine we'd noticed earlier was from the same winery, Meeker Vineyard. The zombie wine which is actually called Formula 2 is a seasonal wine that wine club members could purchase. It is a mix of a bunch of grapes but he assured us it was good stuff. Because it was seasonal for Halloween they were on sale. So I spurlged for zombie/frankenstein wine, and we opened it up for wine night last night.

Formula 2 was really good wine. The perfect amount of sweetness mixed in with other lovely winey flavors. I wasn't in the mood to analyze yesterday. It was the sort of good wine that I could easily drink half a bottle in one glass. I browsed their website and most of their wines are a reasonable price. It would be a fun vineyard to do some tastings at, and perhaps even become a club member.

Village Vitner Zin

A couple weekends ago our friends Jon and Theresa came to visit. Theresa is on her way to becoming quite the wino herself and found the Village Vitner, a small winery in Carpentersville Illinois. I believe she has even joined the wine club. She brought their old vine Zin down for us to sample and enjoy.

I'd never heard of old vine Zin's in Illinois, and was surprised by it's flavor. It's definitely not a Cali Zin, but not in a bad way. It had a very deep smokey flavor to it, something I'd never tasted before in a wine. At first it was just different and odd. It made me kinda think about it. But it was good, would have been really great with food, like a roast or some sort of meat.

This would be an interesting place to stop by to sample the rest of their wines.

Bottle Shock

Although no wine was drank while watching this movie or even while I type this...I figure a review of a movie about wine fits this blog just fine. Recently Chris and I watched Bottle Shock, a light movie loosely based on the story of how California wines beat French wines in a blind tasting. A British wine merchant (Alan Rickman) sets up a blind wine tasting in France. He travels to California to sample wines from many vineyards and hand picks a few for the tasting. Two California wines, a Chardonnay from Chateau Montelena, and a Cab Sav from Stag's Leap beat out the French wines to the shock of the french judges. At this point in time French wine was the only wine that was considered good wine. The tasting blew open the doors for the rest of the world, and certainly gave California a name in the wine industry.

At times the movie is silly and corny, but worth it anyway for the hilarious 1970's clothing and who doesn't love Alan Rickman?

While discussing the movie w/ Miranda we decided the next time I'm in Cali we'll check out the vineyards that made the movie. That would be awesome, although I was at a high end wine shop w/ Theresa over the weekend and we found a couple bottles of Stag's Leap wine. The cheapest bottle was $70! So visiting the vineyard itself could be a bit pricey as well. Better start saving now!

Hidden Jewel Old Vine Zin

This bottle here is the reason for my 4 month binge of Zinfandel's. =0) We bought this when we visited Miranda out in California. The first night we went out to Lodi to find a winery that was open past 4 and found Hidden Jewel. Lodi California is known for their zinfandel's and for good reason....they're fabulous. After this vacation every time I went to the wine store I'd look for Lodi zins...they are always wonderful. This was the first bottle I had that was old vine zin. The flavors are slightly more rich but still smooth. It's a pity Hidden Jewel doesn't distribute around here.

Cabernet Sauvignon with Red Chile

In December my parents went on vacation to New Mexico and Arizona areas. While they were there they checked out a few of the local wineries. They brought me back a bottle from the Anderson Family Vineyard in New Mexico. It was a Cabernet Sauvignon with Red Chile.

When I first saw this I immediately thought of the chili beer we'd tried before that was awful! But my parents assured me that this was good. They recommended drinking it with a meal. So I made a fancy taco dinner and Chris and I opened this bottle. It was really good. A nice smooth cab sav that didn't need much breathing, and an underlying spice. At first you're not quite sure if the spice is there or if it's from your food. There isn't a pepper flavor it's just a spice and at just the right intensity. Drinking it with the meal worked very well. I had another glass after dinner and the spice definitely got a little stronger. Although for the record I am a wuss when it comes to spice. So don't be afraid of this wine. I'm pretty sure we can't get this wine in Illinois, but if we could it would be an excellent compliment to any and all mexican meals. And a great conversation bottle at a wine party or tasting.