Wake up Blog!

I thought I'd wake up the Winey Thoughts to share what I've been drinking this summer.  I've been mixing it up between expensive beer and cheap wine.  Get excited!

First up my FAVORITE beer right now is Domaine Dupage by Two Brothers Brewery.  A "local" brewery from Warrenville IL.  C and I need to make a trip to do a tour because really all their beers are good.

Domaine is a versitile beer.  I would describe it as a really good red or amber ale, loaded with lots of flavor.  It tasted great during the hottest hot stretch of summer (100 plus degrees) and now that it's starting to chill out a bit for fall I'm still craving this beer.  That's hard to do for me...I'm usually a seasonal beer drinker and a summer one does not go great for me in fall.  Honestly though, I can see myself sticking w/ Domaine until winter hits and almost skipping the Oktoberfests...almost.  It's a pricey beer.  You can easily spend $10 on a six pack, I think we've even seen it higher down here in Ptown.  But to my delight lots of bars have started carrying it on tap.  I might have had a tall Domaine Dupage at Buffalo Wild Wings for $5.75!  and it was delish.

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.

Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio

Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio is my stand by favorite pinot grigio. I know it'll be a good bottle of pinot. And this is what we had for our Valentine's dinner. We ordered carry out sushi and wanted a nice light white wine. It's a bit pricey, $22 here in P-town, but for a special night it's worth the splurge. We bought a 2007 bottle and as always it was tasty. Pinot Grigio is about the sweetest I like to go in wine any more. This one is definitely not too sweet. There is a nice fruity flavor which brings a sweetness. But it's not like the sugary sweet that some wines can have.