November has Come and Gone

Hello, wine lovers. My apologies for dropping off the face of the Earth during November. Turns out trying to do NaNoWriMo, my online class, spend time with the Scotch Man and the Jedi, and overall keep my sanity, I did not, in fact, have time to do my wine blog, as well.

This weekend I am working on the final exam for my online class, but then for the next month I will be free like the wind. Once free, I will write lots and lots of wine blogs.

I am excited to share my stories about my Election Night wine tasting, the new wine store the Scotch Man and I found, and tell you about all of the bottles I've tried since my last post.

Look for me to make my full-fledged return next week! Hope to see you then.

Red Wine Reminiscence

Thanks for your Patience!

Hello, Readers. I haven't posted the past couple of weeks because I haven't been drinking much wine. It took me awhile to finish both bottles from the wine tasting, and I've still been trying to watch my calories for the Scale Down Challenge.

However, it is now November, which means it's National Novel Writing Month. I usually drink a glass or two of wine in the evenings while I'm writing, so I will have new bottles to review soon. I hope to be back to my regularly scheduled weekly posts every Sunday starting next weekend!

If you want to know how Nanowrimo is going, feel free to pop over to the Confabulator Cafe. I post every Tuesday morning.

See you next week!

Brutocao - 2007 Pinot Noir vs. Zinfandel

Sounds impossible, but I think wine tastes different depending on where you drink it and who you drink it with.

Tonight, I did a little taste-testing experiment with my sister. She's off living the big city life now that she's living and working in Kansas City, and she's loving it. She stopped by this evening to pick up some mail, and I roped her into staying to try out some wines with me.

Awhile back, Cork and Barrel had a clearance sale. They were rearranging their wine, and decided to sell what wasn't moving. I bought two bottles from the same company and decided to do a back to back tasting to truly discover what the difference in grapes was like.

I bought the Pinot Noir and the Zinfandel from Brutocao. The vintage was 2007 for both, although the Pinot was grown at Anderson Valley (Mendocino) while that Zinfandel was grown at Hopeland Ranch (also Mendocino).

Our overall impression was that the Pinot Noir was a little yummier. Both were very delicious, but whereas the Zin was spicy (verging on dusty), with a slight taste of fruit before the dry bite and a complex finish, the Pinot seemed warmer, much more fruity, and didn't have as strong as a finish.

The Sister and I both liked the Pinot Noir better.

We had quite a lot of fun trying both bottles and using Kroger Swiss cheese as a pallet cleanser between glasses. I love drinking wine with my sister. She has this amazing, contagious laugh that sets me off, even when she's laughing at me, and wine makes her giggle all the more freely.

She is one of my favorite people to hang out with.

Kendall-Jackson - 2008 Summation

I started this bottle at the Scotch Man's house but it was neglected for awhile and lost a lot of it's flavor by the time I got back to it. Finally finished a couple of weekends ago. It was still drinkable though. I'm pretty impressed.

Sadly, this will be my last bottle for awhile. The next bottle I open will probably take me a long time to drink, because the Scotch Man and I are doing a weight loss competition through the University we work at. The first place prize is $400, and the Scotch Man is in it to win it. We will be pacing ourselves when it comes to alcohol, since it's a lot of empty calories.

He has been drinking more scotch than wine lately. He drank scotch as I drank this bottle of wine, which is another reason it has taken me weeks instead of only a week to get through it.

I hope to be able to continue to write every week, but I might have to take a week or two off in order to consume enough wine to write about it.

It's a ten week challenge. We only have six left to go!

Wish us luck.

Davenport Orchards and Winery 2012

Some of you may remember my trip to Davenport Orchards and Winery last year the weekend I went to pick grapes.

Well I went back for more again this year. And this time I dragged the Scotch Man along with me.

Here we are at the vineyard!



We spent about three hours picking grapes off the vine with the other volunteers and seasonal workers. Look at all the grapes we picked!

Ok, so the Scotch Man and I didn't pick all of these. We probably only contributed three or four bins out of the total forty-nine.

After they fed us lunch (along with a complimentary glass of wine!) we got to watch them load all of the grapes into the de-stemming and crushing machine. They put us back to work helping out. I got to swap out bins to catch all of the stems and other trash came spewing from the back end of the machine.

I got a little messy.

Ok, so this might be a bit embellished for effect, but I did get pretty messy. The guys working there took some extra gunk off the machine and made me rub my hands in it before we took the picture, hehe.

After we finished working, we went back to the tasting room and tried all of the different wines they had for tasting. The Scotch Man bought a bottle called Jazz Man, and I got one called Matrot - which is made with Norton grape, the same type of grape we were picking today.

Overall it was a long, exhausting day, but the weather was amazing, I got to see a lot of awesome stuff, and I  got to spend the day with my man. He did a good job helping out. Here he is helping mash the skins back down into the fermenting liquid.

I can't wait to drink the bottles we got today. And I can't wait to go back in a couple of years to get a bottle made of the 2012 Norton we helped pick this year.

Heron - 2009 Mendocino Merlot

This bottle of Merlot I opened while talking on the phone to an old friend of mine that I don't get to see very often anymore. He scoffed at my choice of Merlot and made a recommendation of a wine that he regularly drinks that I promptly forgot (and still can't remember - something about sisters). I see he still hasn't posted it on my recommendations page, even after a long tangent of him trying to log into his own Blogger account while we were chatting.

I forgive him. For not visiting my site, for thumbing his nose at my choice in wine, and for only talking to me for two hours in the last six months.

I'm a pretty good friend. Once you're friends with me, you're pretty much stuck with me forever. I'll always be here waiting.

Merlot, in general, I've discovered are pretty dry. This one had the typical dry burn, and no noticeable flavor afterward. I've decided that that's what makes a good wine to me. If I can still taste some of the grape, or some other flavor, through the dryness. I know there is probably a good wine term for that, like finish or something.

I've been drinking wine for long enough that I feel like I should have a better idea of what I like and what I don't, but I am still learning. So far it's been mostly blends that I've liked them most, but every blend is different.

Heck, I've found that even different brands of the same kind of wine are different. It's so hard to settle on something I'm really happy with.

Although why settle on one? There are too many wines out there to try. My work has only just begun!

Columbia Crest Grand Estates - 2008 Merlot

My sister stayed with me for about three weeks at the end of the summer as she transitioned from one great life event to the next. I was happy to have her, in spite of my initial reservations. I should have known we'd be fine. It took three years living together for us to drive each other crazy, and this was only three weeks.

I had gotten so used to her being around, actually, that I found myself a little sad when she told me she had found a job and an apartment and would be moving out within the next few days. So we cracked opened a bottle of wine to celebrate and commiserate.

The bottle I chose was the Columbia Crest Grand Estates Merlot from 2008. I've tried a couple of different bottles of the Columbia Crest, and while this particular bottle wasn't too bad, it wasn't nowhere near as delicious as some of the other bottles of theirs I've tried.

I'm not sure I'm much of a Merlot fan.

So while we drank, we filled out these "Rate that Wine" forms Luigi gave me for my birthday. They have silly rating systems like "murky as a polluted lake" and "medley of vinegar" and "harmoniously tongue loving" or my personal favorite "will also linger in my dreams" to describe each part of the wine. Using this form you can give the wine a 1-5 on label, color, clarity, nose, body, flavor, and finish.

Of course neither of us really knew what we were doing, but overall we both rated it about a solid 3 out of 5 overall. My sister, who isn't a fan of red wines, noted that her overall impression was "meh, not bad for a red."

And as we drank, we became somber and philosophical, and talked late into the night.

A week later she was gone, and I finished the rest of this bottle on what would have been Mom's birthday, feeling sorry for myself that we lost her the day after she turned 56, two years ago.

A melancholy bottle of wine, it was.