I went to the cellar and what did I see?
Bianchi Zen Zinfandel staring at me!
Glaymond Zinfandel also I see:
Barossa Valley 2003!
I was tempted by Rusden 2003
but 2 zins from 2 continents
seemed enough
the hubby’s lamb
on the grill
tender not tough!
Rhyming pomes
just aren’t my thing
but these zinfandels inspire
trying to make it all ring
I give up–I may be a poet but I am not into rhyming! Tomorrow I’ll get up a more serious post about the wines I’m tasting for Global #zinfandel day. In the meantime, check out my twitter feed.
Last weekend, for my son’s 7th birthday, we invited everyone he and we could think of to join us at Sycamore Cove State Beach campground for a camp out and birthday party.
So what wine did I bring to go along with bugs and hot dogs?
You might be surprised to discover I brought Pepperwood Grove Old Vine Zinfandel–a wine in a box.
Now before you turn up your nose, hear me out.
We do a LOT of camping. We go to Burning Man. We gather with friends for BBQs at the beach. We go off road for hours and hours on end to get to a remote campsite or hot spring. We are SERIOUS campers.
And I am serious about wine as well–even when I’m camping! After all, that’s when we really eat well and we have time to relax and enjoy ourselves, the view, the evening air…For proof, Continue reading →
We love Halloween around here! We love pumpkin bread and pumpkin soup and even Smashing Pumpkins Ale! We put pumpkin in our pancakes and waffles regularly–not just at Halloween.
So when a friend of mine sent me this recipe a month ago for a pumpkin soup, I knew we’d be having it during this Halloween season. She also suggested that I pair it with a merlot, Continue reading →
Tonight we celebrated the release of my new poetry collection, Middle of the Night Poems from Daughter to Mother :: Mother to Son from en theos press–and we chose champagne, of course!
Actually, Grandin, to be precise, is a French sparkler NOT from Champagne but from the Loire Valley. I picked up at a tasting at a local restaurant featuring wines from the Henry Group and others. I paid around $20 for it and found it a refreshing change from the typical supermarket sparklers which most of us more commonly enjoy. It offers fine bubbles and lots of complexity–not sweet or fruity, but nutty (almond and hazelnut) with lots of acid (lime? lemon?), spice, and yeast.
We had the Grandin with a dinner of fresh shrimp right off the boat, simply prepared in butter and garlic, with pasta, and I have to admit that it was gone before I realized I lacked sufficient wine notes to say much about it except that, given the opportunity, I would absolutely buy it again.
Read more about Middle of the Night Poems from Daughter to Mother :: Mother to Son from en theos press, the poetry collection we were celebrating, below. By the way, this is NOT a collection of poetry about wine…but poetry by someone who LOVES wine!
Just in time for the Women’s Conference in Long Beach on Monday, I have 108 signed limited edition copies of my new poetry book, Middle of the Night Poems From Daughter to Mother :: Mother to Son (en theos press). I also put my “chop” on it: a special jade stamp the traditional red wax with my name in Chinese. The signed limited edition published for the Women’s Conference will be available at the Devone Designs Perfect Fit Jewelry display in the … Read More
This month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday, hosted by The Passionate Foodie, asks us to sniff out some “dog strangler” wine aka mourvedre. So, for the 69th editionWine Blogging Wednesday that’s what I did.
Actually I began my search for wines with mourvedre nearly two years ago when I first tasted a 2001 rbj theologicum which blends 50% of the mourvedre sinner with 50% of the saintly grenache.
I thought I’d died and gone to heaven and hell all at once.
Instead, I was on a search to find a wine I could barely pronounce, and which I could barely find. Fortuantely for me, the grateful Palate Warehouse used to be located only a few miles away and they would periodically open their doors and let us in.
And that’s how I discovered a straight mourvedre–a rbj 2002 Mataro which I opened on a camping trip in the heart of the Sierras.
So when I discovered this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday featured possibly my favorite varietal, and certainly one that makes my favorite blends shine, I howled with delight.
And then howled some more–what wine to choose? Or more precisely, whose?
An obvious choice would be Twisted Oak. Their mourvedre with the macabre red skull emblazened across the bottle is stunningly good. And they do my favorite blend mourvedre, grenache and syrah aka “Potty Mouth” that I love–especially the 2003 which is still available in their library.
Another obvious choice is Randall Grahm’s Bonny Doon. It seems he recovered rhone varietals like grenache and mourvedre from obscurity in California. And his Cigar Volant is always noteworthy.
So after much agonizing and howling at the crescent moon, I went for a winery I discovered in December and which maybe I can help you discover too (although they have thousands of facebook fans so obviously some people know them already!)
The wine with more than 50% mourvedre that I chose for this edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday comes from Core Winery, run by Dave and Becky Corey, with financial backing and support from many family members.
And it’s Hard Core. Seriously Hard Core. A 2005 Hard Core made up of 60% mourvedre, 25% grenache, and 15% cabernet sauvignon.
Only 665 cases of this wine was produced, and it’s all gone except for what might be in people’s cellars–and a handful of splits which I found at the winery when we went by the other day.
We went to the Core winery as part of a wedding anniversary extravaganza (ok we went to Sycamore Hot Springs, Go Westy, Los Olivos for lunch and tasting at Carhartts and Carina) that started with dinner on our anniversary where I brought in a bottle of the 2006 Hard Core. While I prefer my syrah with mourvedre and grenache, my husband definitely prefers his syrah with a backbone of cab to it. Continue reading →
Over the weekend, I heard good news and bad: the bad news was that I was on the waiting list for a scholarship to this year’s Wine Blogging Conference in Walla Walla Washington.
The good news was that I was on the waiting list for the Wine Blogger’s Conference Scholarship–and if enough money came into the Scholarship Fund, I’d be on my way to Washington in mid-June!!
You can imagine I was already on pins and needles waiting this past week to find out if I’d won a scholarship, and now, I’d have to wait longer! My mind raced, wondering ho I could help drum up more cash for the conference–and how far down I was on the waiting list.
I am sure you can also imagine my relief and my excitement when I checked my email during a break in my Monday night Women’s Economic Ventures class to discover I’d won!! As soon as I got home, I told my spouse and we popped the cork on the bottle of Domaine Ste. Michelle Sparkling wine I had waiting for this moment! Continue reading →
Rick Bakas has organized a tasting of California Cabernet Sauv’s using 140 character comments on twitter for Thursday February 11. From 5-5:30pm, participants will taste and tweet first about cab wines from the southern portion of the state (Paso Robles and down) from 5-5:30pm, taste and tweet about cabs from the middle region of the state from 5:30-6pm, then taste and tweet about cabs from the northern reaches from 6-7pm.
He encourages us to live it up and open, taste and tweet about wines from each region. I’m not sure whether I will do that; I do know that I will tasting and tweeting about wines made by Michael Meagher, winemaker for Vino V and Old Creek Road Winery. I wish I could make it to the Old Creek Ranch Winery, and do this tasting with him, but I’ll be here doing it at home. Next time!
Will you be joining in the fun? If so, use the hashtag #CaliCabs. You might also want to do a search and column on that hashtag so you can see what everyone else is tasting and saying.
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 