39 posts tagged “wine”

Last night, we ate at Las Tapas, a Spanish restaurant on King Street in Alexandria.  It was awesome and delicious.  I'd never had tapas before.  They're basically appetizers of various sorts that people order in a combination to make a meal.  Mine consisted of steamed mussels and clams in a sherry tomato sauce, potato-stuffed veal in a Spanish brown sauce, artichokes, and slices of Spanish cheese.  Nummy.

With dinner, we each had a glass of Amontillado sherry.  We basically did this so we could toast each other with "For the love of God, Montresor!"

Strix brought this home from the store the other day.  She had gotten some smoked salmon in the mail from her brother as a graduation present, so she bought this to drink while we ate salmon on crackers with chevre cheese and capers (nom nom nom).

The beaujolais was good for this purpose.  It was not very complex, but it had a nice smoky flavor that complemented the salmon.

I don't know that I've ever had an Italian Chardonnay.  Now I have.  That's about all I can say.  I'm not particularly fond of chardonnay, anymore - it all tastes the same to me, and this didn't stick out.  Still, it was very drinkable, and that's good considering it came in a 1.5 L bottle.

I'm behind in blogging my wine tasting, so you can expect more over the next couple of days.  In other news, I injured myself at rehearsal tonight.  There's a scene in the play where I'm supposed to be edging my way across a ledge outside the apartment window, then fall off backwards.  While I was wheeling my arms around to keep from falling off, I hit a pole behind the set in the scene shop, and now I have a large, painful knot on my arm.

Also, I'm feeling a little self-conscious.  There are two actresses in this play that I'm supposed to kiss at various points.  Both of them have seemed really unwilling to do so, and have had to "psych" themselves up to it.  To me, it's just part of the role - it's what the script calls for.  The fact that they approach the task like they're getting ready to clean a litterbox seems insulting to me.  Oh, well.

Yet another Australian wine, this riesling is crisp, clean, citrusy, and pleasant to drink.  Thanks, my Aussie friends, for making such good wine.

This New Zealand white was very nice.  It was crisp, almost effervescent, and fruity, with strong oak tones and a floral tone.

Thank god for the mediocre wines, because it is only by those that we can tell the exceptional ones, right?

This was an $8 sale item from a California vineyard, and it was a thoroughly drinkable shiraz with no distinguishing characteristics whatsoever.  No plum notes, no dark cherry, no blackberry, no turpentine - nothing but red wine.

This is an Australian Shiraz, and it was wonderful.  Like the woods of Robert Frost's poem, I like my red wines lovely, dark, and deep, and this meets that criteria.  It was subtly sweet with strong flavors of black cherry and dark plum.

[This post cross-posted to NaBloPoMo, for National Blog Posting Month.]

Wines of the San Juan is the only vineyard in San Juan County.  They have a number of blended table wines, as well as some straight varietals like this one.  Frankly, most of their wines are too sweet for me, but I do like their Manzanares Red and the Blue Winged Olive.

The Manzanares Red is their red zinfandel, and while it is not very complex, it is very drinkable and a lovely wine to relax with and enjoy the evening with.  Manzanares is an "area" in the eastern end of San Juan County, New Mexico.

Yesterday, Strix and I went to the Harvest Fest at the Wines of the San Juan Vineyard, which is on the Easterly side of the County.

The vineyard is in a beautiful location near a little unincorporated village called Turley.  We've been here before, near a shear bluff and in a copse of huge trees, enjoying good music, good wine, and a nice breeze.  Yesterday, the breeze wasn't so much a breeze as a gail.  The wind was terrible, and kept kicking up little sandstorms, and yet everyone stayed and enjoyed themselves anyway.

On the way in, looking back to the highway.  Yes, it's an oil well in a vineyard.

We got there just in time to hear the last couple of sets from the Stillwater Steel Drum band, which is made up mostly of children, but they were really good.  Unfortunately, we missed the grape stomping contest.

Christmas lights made out of shotgun shells adorned one of the artist vender boothes.

I couldn't get a clear shot of the tasting bar, because of how many people were there.

The outdoor tasting area.  You can see how sandy the soil is here, which you would think would be difficult to grow anything in, but it's actually not a bad kind of soil to grow wine.

There are several tiny little houses on the property, presumably where the proprietors live.

A little walkway leading back to the pond.  Strix is on the left side of the frame taking a pic of the house above.

A pic of another house, with vines out front, and the gorgeous bluff in the background.  The picture doesn't do it justice, that bluff rises up out of flat ground just on the other side of the highway about six hundred feet straight up.

The worst thing about this garden would be going out and picking the peacock feathers out from between the plants every morning.  Yes, they have peacocks on the property, too, but they had them all locked up and out of the way for the festivities.

Okay, there are drawbacks to living the rustic life, like having to use outhouses.  But, hey, horses!

 

A couple more views of the bluffs, near sunset.

 

I've said it before about New Mexico: we do "dramatically dead trees" better than anyone else.

If you find yourself at Wines of the San Juan someday, I suggest the following wines: Girls are Meaner (their Gewurztraminer) or the Manzanaras Red (red Zinfandel).  Strix really likes the Blue Winged Olive, their Muscat, but only get that if you like your wine really sweet.

So what can you say about a $5 bottle of pinot noir?  How about, "Hey, that's actually not bad."  This isn't a wine to write home about, with little complexity to it.  There are some undertones of black cherry or blackberry, which I expect in a pinot noir, but beyond that it's just a flat table wine.  The fact that it's actually drinkable and recognizable as a pinot at $5 per bottle is amazing enough, so let's just say it did it's job.

And drank this and used it on a homemade marinara over rotini.  The marinara was delicious, and would be a good base for any variation I wanted to make on pasta sauces.  I'll definitely be keeping this recipe.