37 posts tagged “wine”

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.

We drank this today with snapper à la Caribbean, made by yours truly.  This is a Californian Chardonnay from the Russian River Valley (note: not actually in Russia).  It was very oaky, as Chardonnay tends to be, with tones of caramel apple.  I'm not an enormous fan of Chardonnay, but this was very good, and it went very well with the seafood dish.

The dish itself was interesting.  We couldn't actually get snapper (the store was out), so we used tilapia, which was very good but I think it would have been better with snapper.  The recipe called for grapeseed oil, which I'd never used before.  I mean, really, how many grapeseeds do you have to squeez to get a can of grapeseed oil?  My guess is a lot.  Info I found online about grapeseed oil is that it has a very high flash point (485° F), so it's good for frying foods at high temperature.  The fish was also coated in semolina flour before frying, which made for a very light breading.  All in all, this was an excellent meal, and I have the marinade left over, which I can cook down and use to season rice, later.

I went to Albuquerque yesterday to pick Strix up from the airport, and she hadn't had dinner yet so before heading back we ate at one of my favorite restaurants, Chama River Brewing Company.  Relaxed but sophisticated atmosphere, excellent service, great microbrews, terrific wine selection, and outstanding food.  I can't recommend this place enough.

I had honey-glazed salmon served on a bed of mashed sweet potatoes with french beans.  Yes, it's just as good as it sounds, only more so.  I had a lovely glass of pinot noir with it.  Strix had farfalle stossed in pesto with shrimp.  She had a wine of a varietal we had never heard of - albariño - a Spanish wine.  We both finished our dinners, and I asked Strix if it would be bad manners to lick my plate.