Happy New Year!

"Come quickly, I am tasting the stars!"

~ Dom Perignon, at the moment he discovered champagne

cigarzin search

I've found another wine to add to the "to drink" list. Cigarzin Zinfandel from Lodi California. I was at dinner last night with some friends and they ordered a glass. I'd heard good things and tried a tiny sip. It was yummy. Smooth, and fruity, and smooth. After some googling I'm pretty sure it comes from the Cosentino Winery. The 2007 vintage is supposed to be lovely which is what I sipped. Now to find a bottle is a nother mission/adventure.

Wine Soda

Last week, I went with a friend to the Oakland Museum of California to visit see the Pixar exhibit. While waiting to make it into the exhibit, we decided to take a trek around the cafeteria. There we saw bottles of Vignette Wine Country Soda. Since my friend doesn't drink and we were in too big of a hurry for me to sit to sip a beer we decided to try these non-alcoholic drinks.

We tried the Pinot Noir and the Chardonnay. And let me say, this may be the first Chardonnay that I actually liked. The drinks aren't as sweet as sparkling grape juice (or grape soda), but still have a bubble. I'd even go so far as to say 'light'. We didn't try the Rosé, but next time for sure. I highly recommend for when you want a change from your normal sugary sodas. I don't know that I would say it was like drinking a glass of wine, but it was kind of nice to ditch the normal sodas (but for around $5.00 a bottle I might just stick to the real thing).

Have you ever tried a wine soda? What'd you think?

food and wine top 2010 wines

I've been flipping through the December issue of Food and Wine magazine lately and came across a small article with the top bottles of 2010. The list is 4 bottles long and picked out by F+W's wine tasters.

1. 2008 Alice et Olivier De Moor Chablis Rosette ($38) slightly higher than my price range but if I ran across this I'd pick it up b/c it made the list.
2. Chateau Palmer Historical XIXth C. Wine ($250) way out of my price range. Once wine's get this expensive it blows me away, I mean I've had some wonderfully glorious wines but how good can they get? I may never know.
3. 2008 Man O'War Syrah ($22) This brand sounds familiar, I may even be able to find it at my local booze shop.
4. 2007 El Pecado ($80) Seems that I've been hearing more about Spanish wines lately.

a new look

The old look was slowly driving me bonkers so Winey Thoughts is going through a face lift. It's going in stages basically when I get a spare moment I do some tweaking. So far I'm happy w/ the banner but not happy with the title color which may mean I need to tweak the banner. I did add a second page with lists of wines that we want to try. Feel free to leave any recommendations in the comments. Thanks for being patient during reconstruction, more reviews will come soon.

Drinking for a Cause

Over at my other blog, I recently wrote a list of things that I wanted for Christmas this year. One of the items on my list was (Fledgling Wine). This wine raises money for Room to Read which is a great non profit that works for worldwide literacy. This made me start thinking about other wines and wineries that give back (besides that headache the next morning).

Here's a list of wines that I found that are making a change, one bottle at a time:

1) Macchia's Victorious Zinfandel (nicknamed Boobylicious) - $5.00 of every bottle sold is donated to American Association for Cancer Research

2) One Hope Winery - Winery has a variety of different wine options and 50% of profits are donated to causes such as autism, AIDS, our troops, breast cancer, planet and children's hospitals

3) Greater Purpose Wine - 55% of the wine profits benefit abandoned and orphaned children

4) Cleavage Creek Winery - Each winery label features a breast cancer survivor and 10% of purchase is donated to breast cancer research

5) Lookout Ridge Wine - Donates one wheelchair for every bottle sold of their new releases  

6) Philanthropie Wine - Percentage of the sales from bottles of wine goes to six Oregon animal charities

7) Mutt Lynch Wine - A portion of sales goes to support local animal rescue operations

I'm definitely going to add some of these wines onto my 'To Drink' list. How about you? Do you know of a winery that gives back with their wine? If so, please leave a comment so we can check it out.

Fire + Wine

One of my favorite Lodi wineries, Harney Winery, opened the winery tonight for "Ladies Night". They offered lots of fun stuff like tasting, drinks, food samples, and shopping for holiday gits. Instead of dealing with the crowds, we just grabbed a glass of wine and sat by the fire pit and toasted to life. Mine was the Old Vine Zinfandel ($9.00), hers was the Petite Sirah ($7.00).

Sometimes it's nice to just kick back and drink some wine. I hope you all do the same this week!

wine and cookie party

Tonight we had a small get together with some friends, a wine and cookie party. Tis the season for cookie swap parties and I figured we'd spice that up a bit and include some wine. Friends brought homemade cookies and wine and we sampled them all and am quite proud of our graveyard of empty wine bottles. In fact there are more left over cookies than wine. I'm not going to review the wines I tried and I didn't try them all. But I'll list what we had and maybe some general thoughts.

• Ravenswood Zinfandel 2008
• Cycles Gladiator Pinot Noir 2008 I've reviewed this before but I don't remember what year it was. Still a reliably good wine.
• 2006 Bordeaux Superieur Chateau Virecourt Pillebourse a French wine my inlaws gave us, I'm pretty sure my SIL picked it out last time she was in town. I know nothing of French wines but this was pretty good. I'd get it again for a review.
• Da Vinci Pinot Grigio 2008 I don't remember if I'd had this before or not but I've had their chianti before and it was good. I'll have to do this one again for a review as well.
• St. James Winery's Country White A local winery that I haven't tried before.
• Cranberry Wine from Tomasello Winery. Made from 100% cranberries this was an intriguing wine that proved quite good for a "sweet" wine. I say "sweet" because it tasted like cranberry juice, so it's not a true sweet it's that wonderful bitter bite that cranberries have. And I have a soft spot for cranberries so I very much enjoyed this wine.

beer obsession

I'm not winey snobby enough to only be a wine drinker. In fact I love a good beer and tend to have a beer regularly. Beers are great, like wine different beers can go with the season, or the mood. One of our fave beers in the house are from Leinenkugel's. It's a brewery in Wisconsin that we discovered years ago.
Our first Leinie obsession was their honey weiss, a summer beer that has become available year round. It's light and flavorful, and we very much enjoy this in late spring and summer. The first time we tried Leinie's Oktoberfest was about 3 years ago and we were in love. A seasonal beer that comes out in mid August and by October most places were sold out. It was about all we drank for those few months. Since then we've tasted lots of oktoberfest beers from other breweries, but this one has a special place for both of us.
2 years ago we tried one of their new seasonals, FireSide Nut Brown. A warm darker beer with spice flavors. It comes out after the Oktoberfest and we fell in love with this for around the Thanksgiving season as well as through out the winter. The spices and hazelnut flavor reminded me of holidays and cozy fireplaces. Last year I was pregnant so not much beer obsession was had by me. Although I did smell a few and look longingly at Chris a few times.
This year the obsession is Leinie's Creamy Dark. They've had this beer for a long time and we've just now tried it. It's similar to the Nut Brown but w/out the nut flavor and the spices are toned down slight. The beer isn't as dark as a stout but it's still a sipping beer which is perfect for this time of year. We're very much enjoying it and it's just about all we've bought over the past month or so.