A Very Short Story On Cabernet & Spies

Last night I cannot comment on much except for the wine. How much trouble can you get it talking about wine?.... Unless you’ve just been stopped by a cop for a possible DUI. Probably not a good time to give a dissertation on wine.

OK. So I was spying on someone. It wasn’t stalking, I don’t intend to make a habit of it so that makes it “an investigation”.. .and Spy sounds more fun than “investigator” coupled with a great restaurant and wine. Very sexy. So nice that the spyee had great taste in food. Did I mention I love my job? (ok right then… there are frequent times I’d rather be on fire, just out of reach of chocolate or told that prohibition has been reinstated.)

So after leaving my trench coat and slouchy hat at the door I knew I had to blend in so I scored a really nice ’06 Chateau St. Jean Cabernet. Hearty red but with mellow oak and just an all around pleasant finish. It went really well with my seafood pasta in red sauce. This place also had the most heavenly chocolate orange cake thing. Yummy. I was about to try a dessert wine with it when I realized that falling off the barstool might attract attention (a good spy uh.. investigator… does not attract attention) and I also had my car down the street and it was a long walk back to the quaint motel next to the BINGO biker bar. I did not want to be giving dissertations of any kind to any law enforcement…..I had coffee. It was great.

I said this would be short so that’s it.

Bye.

Superbowl & Dog Shows & Ice Wines

Yesterday.. Superbowl. It was a very exciting game. Sadly the Cardinals did not win but they gave the Steelers a run for their money. My husband made cool munchies. Little sliders, cheese plates and stuff. He isn’t much of a sports fan, he’s the cooking guru so he is in charge if FOOD (you can follow his blog at http://www.jerryskitchenplayground.blogspot.com/)


OK so cheese plates of course will bring me around to my favorite topic. WINE.
I tried several new wines yesterday, no boss related issues, so really just on the path of true enjoyment.


Last week I went into Whole Foods to indulge in one of my other passions. CHEESE. Picked up some killer cheeses, Lemon Stilton, a new blue I had to try from Cashel, Ireland, one of my favorite places to go on a self guided drinking tour. At some point I will get my travel blog going and you can see the great castle at Cashel (say that really fast 3x).




OK back to cheese.
Anyway, of course next to the cheese is the wine section and this nice lady was doing a tasting. Remembering I was the driver I only tasted a little.


I am not real big on Petit Sirah’s but this one had a dog on the label. I am easily distracted by dogs. I love dogs. I think Molly, who won the Eukanuba Dog show last week was the prettiest dog. A real D-O-G not a poofy mop with tiny feet…. I was rooting for her. She did better than the Cardinals. http://www.akc.org/nationalchampionship/index.cfm?section=special_pages&type=BIS&key_image=74980 She has a really sweet face.



Back to wine. Hey.. it is called RAMBLING 101 for a reason....

Turns out some of the proceeds from the sale of this particular wine went to the San Francisco SPCA. Yep a bottle went in the basket. I did actually try it and it was pretty good. Better than I expected. (I suppose if it was truly terrible I could have just given the $$$ to the SPCA myself.) Vinum 2006 Petit Sirah “Pets” http://www.vinumcellars.com/vinum/catalog/view_product.jsp?product_id=1004 I think it was somewhere around $10 was over $10 and under $15.


My next find was at COSTCO. I was a very good girl. I am CRAZY about the Harris Bridge Pinot Gris Dessert Wine “Sarah’s Stories”. Seriously, I took this wine to France as a gift. If you are going to take wine to France it better be REALLLLLLY GOOD. Then I had to ship MORE there for Christmas. This stuff is liquid gold from heaven! It comes in ½ bottles and is spendy I drive 25 miles to get it and pay $30 per bottle and consider it worth every little drop. http://www.harrisbridgevineyard.com/Wine%20Descriptions.html


<----Harris Bridge Sarah's Stories

Now here I am at COSTCO and I spy some ½ bottles of something….. Here comes the part where I was a very good girl. Chateau St. Michelle, one of my stapes for Riesling, has out a 2006 Horse Heaven Hills Ice Wine Chenin Blanc, and there it was… $36.99 per ½ bottle. Ouch. Probably very much worth it but the $180 at Best Buy on the latest version of my favorite photo program and Digital SLR’s For Dummies to go with my new Canon Rebel the day before was still on my husband’s mind. Next to the Horse Heaven Hills (I just like typing that….it’s such a cool name and it gives me hope for George, our ancient horse who went to horse heaven last spring.) Was some St. Chapelle 2006 Ice Wine Riesling from Idaho, $15.99 for a ½ bottle. Price wise that almost put me into the virtuous category so in the basket with the Dubliner cheese and the Pico De Gallo it went. I wish I could find a picture of the bottle…I think the ½ bottles are very cool looking and perfect for long stem flowers, but alas no pictures on google images. (Of that bottle.)


So, the wine was nice, WONDERFUL for the price. Sweet and fruity peachy with some apricot to it lots of flavor. Went great with the emmentaler and the camembert. http://www.northwest-wine.com/Ste-Chapelle-Ice-Wine-Riesling.html


Now I think after stumbling on this site (it has a blog too) http://community.winepressnw.com/I might have to do some more testing of ice wines. Seems there are a LOT of different ones. http://www.northwest-wine.com/Ice-Wine.html



Some days it’s good to be me ;)

Work & Wine Flights

This last month has been given over to me to study blogs and blogging as part of my job. In the process I got my husband to start a blog and decided today that I can just ramble on to myself and if anyone else wants to chime in..well ok. have at it.

My life at any given moment is either fantastic or majorly sucks. The former is usually just the way things are. I have dogs, cats, goats & donkeys. How grumpy can you stay when a donkey turns it's head sideways and looks you in the face? The later usually is directly related to work. Or specifically my boss, who since this happens to be one of those "sucks" timeframes (note Saturday afternoon when my life should be my own), I will, in the interest of keeping my job (although at the moment I cannot figure out why I still want it...Maybe that double digit unemployment rate in my state...) will not elaborate on even though it would make the funniest blog ever written outside of the Julie/Julia Project blog. Seriously if you have not read this blog it is classic. This is all I can find of it so I might have to buy the book. http://blogs.salon.com/0001399

On that note I will say most of his problems can be cured with wine. Not for him, for me. Since they seem to be mine too.

 I like good wine. OK, I like good wine to start with. After a couple of glasses anything that resembles Easter egg dye with a kick will do. 

Recently I have discovered wine flights. 

Wine flights are little taster sets of wine. You can look on a whole wine list and get say, 3 (depending on the flight) different wines in smaller doses. Usually a 2.5 oz pour. These little puppies have sure caused me to break out of my wine shell and try some new stuff. For instance, I am not usually too find of Pinot Noir. Probably a criminal statement of some kind in my state (OR) where the majority of wineries produce the stuff. Thursday night the sommelier, a very knowledgeable young woman at P.F. Chang's talked me into trying the Benton Lane Pinot Noir. She really appealed to my true nature when she said "It's $12 a glass normally." DANG! The whole flight was only $8. Sure worth a try. So very good. Of the three wines I sampled that is the only one I remember. I saw it today in the market on sale for $20.97 a bottle. I almost bought one. If I hadn't been loaded up on Super Bowl party food I would have gone for it. I know my football friends would scarf it down like Gallo.

I am going to investigate this whole wine flights thing some more. 

Have a good weekend and thanks for listening.