Lomas del Valle - 2010 Malbec

I loved this bottle of wine. It was dry but had a lovely finish that was smooth and had a very fruity flavor. I think Malbec might be making it's way up there as far as preferred grape. I think the only two bottles that compared to this were the Amitage and the Castle Rock Zinfandel.

I have new bottles from both vineyards to try soon, so stay tuned for those reviews.

A couple of months ago I managed to really hurt my neck somehow. It was bad enough that I went to the doctor, who ended up prescribing me physical therapy and muscle relaxers. After a week straight of taking muscle relaxers every night, I decided to try an evening without, so I treated myself to this bottle with the pretty blue design on the side. It was a relief to be "high" on something other than drugs. Especially since this was such a pleasant, mellow bottle.

After a few weeks I was finally feeling more like myself, so I finished off the bottle with the Scotch Man. It resulted in a relaxing evening with a sexy conclusion.

I noticed when photographing the bottle that this wine was is a product  of Chile. I always have had a thing for the Latinos.

But don't tell the Scotch Man. He actually is Scottish. ;)

Layer Cake - 2009 Malbec

The Scotch Man wanted to relax the other night. Wine and a movie, he said. I thought maybe wine and writing, which is one of my favorite combinations.

I now have a new favorite combination: wine and Wii!

I'm finally almost recovered from my never-ending illness, and it was the first night I had been feeling like myself for weeks. I was feeling silly. In a brief moment of actual wine research, we both swirled our wine and sniffed our glasses to try and detect what we smelled, using what we learned at our wine tasting last month. After some debate, we decided we smelled black licorice and pencil lead (although I think he was kidding when he said that).

But after half a glass of wine, there was nothing on TV, and in order to watch a movie, he had to move plugs from the Wii to the DVD player. So instead of flipping endlessly through Netflix menus, I told him we should just play Wii, since it was plugged in.

So we did.

The most entertaining part of the evening was when we were attempting the balancing exercises for Wii Fit after 2-3 glasses of wine.

We managed to kill the entire bottle of Layer Cake. It was very full bodied and dry, and actually reminded me a bit of the Birthday Cake martini I had at Johnny's Tavern West one night when all of us writers got together. That's not necessarily a compliment, since neither one really tasted like cake and both were kind of painful to drink

But that's ok. Both nights had another thing in common, as well: good nights with the Scotch Man.