Skype Wine Night - November

We may have failed a little in keeping this blog updated. Don't get us wrong, we've been drinking wine, but we just haven't been writing very much. However, there is a new feature we're going to start (at least for a few months or so) where Crymson and Miranda will have a monthly skype wine night. Basically we're trying to catch up and drink some great wine 2,000 miles away.

And as all things necessary in a civilized society there are a few rules:

1) We each drink the same type of wine

2) We each prepare a recipe

3) Guests are both welcome and encouraged

This past weekend we had our first organized Skype date and we decided that we would also try to cross of one of the wines on our 'Wines To Try' list. It's surprisingly harder than you would think to be able to find the same wine to try in Illinois and California. We resorted to the Internet and UPS to be able to help us out. Now the one downside to ordering wine online (if there can even be such a thing) is that the price of shipping can be nearly as much as the bottle of wine. So we'll have to do some good searching to make sure we're both drinking the same wine.

The Details:

Wine - One Hope Winery's Pinot Noir (featured on Drinking for a Cause post)

Amy's Recipe - Brie En Croute

Miranda's Recipe - Apple Crisp with Dried Cranberries

Amy's take: It was a nice wine, a lot lighter than the pinot noirs I'm used to. But the flavors were nice and smooth and sweet. It went down fast. I'd probably give it 4 stars...any other wine would have probably only gotten three but since this was One Hope and it's a charity that ups it. Kinda fun that we ordered the wine too. At least until we noticed the shipping rates. I made baked brie or if you want to get fancy like Paula Deen, Brie En Croute. It was good and super easy to make. It was more than the three of us could handle though, very rich. I'd bake brie again for a bigger group and I think I'd use an unusual jelly to top it instead of the candied pecans.

Miranda's take: I really enjoyed the wine. It was not nearly as dark red as I thought it would be, but it still had a pretty rich taste. So two thumbs up for One Hope. One for donating 1/2 the profits to charity and one for having a yummy pinot. Overall I'd rate it a three star wine.

Now let me just say that my apple crisp is freaking delicious. I accidentally misjudged the recipe and the size of the pan it needed. I thought a pie plate would be enough so I had to make two batches. And I had nearly finished the first batch prior to wine night. Oops! But seriously I give the recipe like 4 stars.

Does anyone else have skype dates? Any suggestions on a good, but readily available wine? We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Paso Robles Wine Tasting

Last weekend, I went on a great getaway to the Central California Coast. As with many of my trips, wine was near the top of the agenda. We drove down on Saturday morning and spent the day wine tasting in the Paso Robles wine area. We didn't have any specific wineries to visit, we would just drive and see where the day took us. With 250 wineries in the area, we didn't have far to look. Here's the wineries we visited and some of my favorites.

Doce Robles - The first winery we stopped at. I don't really remember anything standing out about this place. I blame the fact that we got up so early to drive down. Definitely will have to stop again when drowsiness is not a factor.

 

Summerwood - As you pull up to this winery, you notice the gorgeous wisteria overhanging the porch. The Vin Rouge wine was a big favorite here.

Peachy Canyon - I'm always a fan of Zins. And when a winery has six available for tasting, I am hooked. Plus the tasting was waived with bottle purchase. So I *forced* myself to bring some 2008 Westside Zin home.

Veris Cellars - You know my favorite kind of wine tasting? Free Wine Tasting. Combine this with cheap bottles of flavored sparkling wine (Peach, Raspberry, and Almond) consider me in love.

Eagle Castle - Not one of our favorites for wine, but the location is just awesome. There were two weddings being held at the castle that day and I couldn't imagine a cooler place to get hitched.

Dark Star Cellars/Brian Benson Cellars - I didn't actually taste any wines here, but I was excited for two reasons: 1) Any where you can try different wineries without having to drive to another place is already tops in my book and 2) the incredible bottle designs at Brian Benson Cellars.

Niner Wine Estates - Another place I didn't try very many wines. But it's a great space and when you look out towards the hill you see the most awesome tree design. I <3 it.

Donati Family Wineyard - Our last stop of the day. The people were super friendly even though some of our crew were feeling the effects of visiting 9 different wineries. Was a fan of the Sorelle Per Sempre wine ('Sisters Forever') and might have to look to get some in the future.

Nine wineries in six hours. Definitely one of my best tasting experiences and it's just getting me prepared for a couple of more weekend tasting adventures in the next month. So have you visited Paso Robles or tried any wines from the region? Any great places we missed?

I Work and Drink in Cubes

My town has two Targets. The one that is 5 minutes from my place and the one that is 20 minutes from my place. Now of course the one that is 20 minutes from my place is the we'll call the 'classy' Target (aka Targét). The one closest to me is let's say less classy (aka Target).

I had four places to stop tonight: the library, Target, Michaels and Office Max. That meant I didn't have the time to spend hours shopping and so I settled on going to the close/shady Target. Of course this Target has a very sad wine display with not a lot of variety. And I didn't want to make another stop. So while looking at bottle after bottle of Mondavi, I decided to take a risk.

I. bought. a. cube. of. wine.

If I have to choose, I think cubes are cuter than boxes. Everyone says so. The cube also pointed out that in Europe (yes, Europe) wine is often offered in nontraditional packages.

I went into this experiment wanting to hate the wine. But a quick glance of my rosy cheeks in the mirror says it all. As far as cheap wine goes, this isn't bad. Plus two bottles at $10 is kinda awesome.

I'd give it 3 stars meaning I'd buy it when I've run out of wine but I know my wine club is going to be coming due in a couple of weeks so I need to make my dollars stretch. Or if I have a big fancy dinner party and need to impress my guests by having expensive wine (meaning I buy the empty bottles and fill them with box wine, ala Raising Hope this week).

Have you ever had box/cube wine? Am I a total wine snob? Or are wine cubes the new black? I'd love to hear what you think!

Sale Wine is the Greatest Wine of All

If I were to list my favorite types of wine, I think my list would go something like this:

10. Moscato

9. Anything with Petit in the name

8. Syrah

7. Cheap Wine

6. Pinot Noirs

5. Cabarets

4. Expensive Wine

3. Zinfadels

2. Old Vine Zinfadels

1. WINE ON SALE

So, imagine my excitement when strolling through the aisles of Safeway a couple of weeks ago and found Firefly Ridge 2008 Central Coast Cabernet Sauvignon on sale for $6.99 regularly $16.99. I consider anything that is more than half off a winner already. Plus I love the name Firefly - consider it a side effect of my obsession with all things Whedon. It already had two things going for it. It was wonderful $7 wine and I would totally stock up on it for that price. I doubt that I would pick it up full price, but that's the danger with sales right? Cause I'll be honest when shopping, I look for the little yellow tags telling me how much I'll save on it this week and I can't remember the last time I bought a full priced bottle. I may be a wine sale slut.

What's your thoughts on sale wine? Does it ever prevent you from buying at regular price? Or does it make it so full price bottles that much more special?

Overall rating: At $7 it is 4 stars meaning "pretty good I'd drink it again" and at $17 it is 3 stars meaning "eh".

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?

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!

I had many, many First Sips

I love going to Lodi, CA for wine tasting. Now everyone talks about Napa and Sonoma when they mention California wine areas, but Lodi has a special place in my heart because 1) It's super close. Seriously 10 minutes and I'm there; 2) It's far less pricey than the Napa and Sonoma areas (usually); 3) It's the first place I ever tried Old Vine Zin.

So, when my friends mentioned that they have a weekend called First Sip, I knew that it was going to be great. The wineries had only started storing the wine in the last few days, so it was a great chance to go an experience newly barreled wine. There were 40 wineries offering food, tastings and drinks, so what a great way to spend the weekend. Here's a run down of the places that I went and my thoughts (if I can remember them......we went to a lot of wineries):

Berghold Estate Winery - Recently my parents mentioned they were interested in getting an old school bar put into their house and I was super impressed with the huge one on display at Berghold. The place has a lot of cool antiques. The cabs were our favorites there.

d'Art Wines - Our first stop of the day and also our first barrel tasting. It's fun to taste the barrels, cause it's still so much like juice. This place also had some delicious lemon olive oil. One of my friends bottled his own bottle, however, it was just basically filling up a bottle and using the machines to put the cork and label on.

Harney Lane Winery - One of my favorite. The wine is seriously so delicious, I can hardly stand it. It's one of the newer wineries and I have a bottle of their zin waiting in my wine rack.

Jessie's Grove - I know they probably hear this all the time, but when I went there, I couldn't stop seeing Jessie's Grove to the tune of Jessie's Girl. I don't remember a lot about this one, it was near the end of the first day. But they make the Earth, Zin and Fire wine that I've had before.

Macchia - My friend is a wine club member here. They have a ton of yummy zins with cool names like Mischievous, Ambitious, Voluptuous, Victorious, etc. They also have a wine that raises money for breast cancer research called Boobylicious. They have a delicious sweet muscat called Sensuous, that I have waiting for a day when it isn't so could outside! Can we also talk about how they had a taco truck on premise and had delicious $3.00 burritos. Seriously, I kind of dream about those burritos to this day.

Michael David - Amy has already shared her love of the Petite Petit and I'm a wine club member here. A favorite of mine.

Periano - Amy recently talked about The Other wine. These are my everyday wines. They have a bunch of decent relatively cheap wines. We bought a case to split and the grand total was $6 a bottle. Awesome.

Dancing Coyote Wines - They had a moscato barrel tasting which was so super sweet and yummy. They also have some very cool labels. This was a second day stop so I didn't buy anything that day, but I'm definitely going to have to next time.

Vino Piazza - Again this was another stop, but holy cow they have a ton of wineries all nestled together. They had a really cleverly named wine that I cannot for the life of me remember that I totally wanted to buy. However, my 9 bottle purchase the day before made me a little gun shy. However, that just means I'll have to go back.

I so should have kept better notes, cause I know we made it to like 4 other wineries that I don't remember! Which just goes to show you how awesome it was right? Now I've just got to get prepped for the next Lodi Wine Event. Will it be Wine and Chocolate or Zinfest? Stay tuned.

My Weekend

When I first traveled to California to see if I wanted to move here, I made my way to the Lodi area and tried my first Old Vine Zinfandel. Ever since then, I have been hooked. And while I didn't move to California just because of the wines, it sure didn't hurt. 

So you can imagine how excited I am to be spending the next two days hitting up the Lodi Wine region for The First Sip. There are 40 different wineries that are giving tastings, food, music and other awesome activities (barrel tasting, grape stomp, music). I'm really excited to get some of the first sips of the 2010 vintages. 

Now, the key is to keep the number of bottles I purchase under control. Fingers crossed. I hope to keep good notes and to offer a great writeup after the event. However, I've got me a designated driver.......so fingers crossed.

What's in a label?

One of the most important things I look at when I select a bottle of wine is the label. I'm such a sucker for wines with a great name and a vivid label. Classy wine drinker, I am not. This past week, I was looking for a bottle that I could take tailgating before a recent concert. I was looking for a wine that was 1) a screw top (save me from having to remember a wine opener) and 2) inexpensive. I ended up bringing Bear Flag's smooth red blend. The label was designed by Eduardo Bertone (take a look at his website here) and is so freaking awesome. The bottle and label are lovely and scream California. For less than $7 the wine was as advertised smooth and easy to go down. I wouldn't pick it everyday to drink, but I know I'm going to have to pick up the other blends to view the labels.

Anyone else choose wine based on the label? Isn't this label super awesome? Anyone else tried this wine, what'd you think?

She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge (or wine)

This past summer, I made a trip to Greece. I tend to fall in love with things easily and it was of no surprise that I fell in love with the Greek wines. The wines are rich and potent, just like I like my wines..... and my men. I tasted several different house wines and find myself lingering still when I go to visit the liquor store in the Greek wines section.

One of our stops was to Minos Winery on the island of Crete. Even at 8 a.m, I was ready for wine tasting. One of my favorite things is cheap, well made wines and Minos had several options. I picked up this Medium - Sweet Table Wine for about eight euros. I tasted it tonight and it was just as delicious as I remembered and instantly took me back to the Mediterranean. I wish I had the kind of refined palate that I could tell you the different flavors in the wine, but years of killing my taste buds with hot sauce and super sour candy have limited my ability. But I can tell you that it's strong, jammy and delicious and that's all I need to know. I'm just upset I couldn't cram more of these bottles into my luggage (Although, I have a tiny bottle of Rose saved for later).

Food and Wine recently had a whole section dedicated to Greek food and Greek wines. I ended up tearing out the entire section of recipes and wines and added them on my to drink and to cook list. Seems I'm going to recreate the Greece experience in my kitchen and my glass for the next few months.

Anyone else have any knowledge of Greek wines? Do you have a wine that reminds you of a favorite place to travel? Let me know and I'll add it on my list!

My Dirty Little Secret

I have a secret to share. Sometimes I need a break from the delicious, powerful Zins and Cabs that sustain my wine drinking existence. And I do that with some of the sweetest, delicious dessert type wines that I can find. I went to visit St. Supery winery about six months ago and after a tasting fell in love with their Moscato wine. It's fruity (with hints of apricot and pear) and so smooth, I tend to drink it like it's liquid candy.

Imagine my joy then when I found out that they have a Moscato only wine club (plus joining the club meant our tastings that day were free, it's like I saved money - as if I need additional encouragement). That's eight delicious bottles of Moscato a year.

A couple of weekends ago St. Supery had a great event for their wine club members. They brought in a traveling wood burning oven and served us lunch and wine. The lunch was a variety of different wood burning oven pizzas and salad and glasses of delicious cabs and chardonnays. It was really the perfect day.

So, does anyone else have a wine drinking guilty pleasure?

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?