Wine Tasting!!!
I started this blog in hopes of sharing my enthusiasm for wine. It started off well....and then marriage, work, kids and life interfered.
Alas, my vision is renewed and tomorrow I am leading my own wine tasting in a spirit of rejuvenation, new beginnings, and fresh starts. Hopefully, as a result, this blog will become more and more frequent.
So join us for a special tasting of Italian wines at Pilgrims Market in Coeur d'Alene, ID. Tasting is free, as well as delicious bacon-wrapped dates, and good company. See you then!
boxed wine, baby showers, and bubbly bonarda
the last month, here at the Pittman household, has been fraught with visitors. With friends and family coming in from all over the country the need for wine has never been greater. Whether wine for entertainment, impressing, or just plain stress relief I've had to pull out all the stops to preserve my reputation and my budget. Here are a few things that were well recieved by all.
First off a little trick for you. For my recent baby shower I had a box of torrentes (a South American varietal that is somewhere between a viognier and a sauvignon blanc) made by yellow and blue. At a full liter for just about ten bucks its actually a great value. However since most people still have a stigma about boxed wine I simply decanted it into a carafe. Not only was no one the wiser, but when they tasted the crisp and citrusey white wine they were all very pleased.
Also at the baby shower, one of my coworkers brought a couple of bottles of prosecco. This italian style of sparkling wine is a delicious, and budget friendly, alternative to Champagne. My coworker brought two kinds of prosecco actually. The first was Il Colle, definately my favorite of the two. Crisp and light with a ripe apple sweetness and a hint of creme caramel that reminded my of flan, it was truly delicious. The other was less spectacular. A lighter sweeter prosecco from Mionetto. Still good, but better suited for mixing. Perhaps a dash or pomegranate juice and a pinch of cinnamon? Sounds good to me.
While we're on the subject of bubbly I should tell you about a particularily interesting sparkler that I enjoyed with my family recently. A fantastic sparkling red wine that brought back memories of eating wild raspberries right off the bush when i was a kid. Fattoria Il Gambero Alborado. This slightly sparkling, or frizzante if you prefer, wine made from the bonarda grape had a great streak of acidity that perfectly balanced the sweet raspberry flavors. The bubbles were small and delicate and evaporated quickly as the wine made its way over my palate (dare i say it was reminiscent of pop rocks? I dare.)
There were a few more affordable gems to be had over the last few weeks, but i think ill save those for the next blog (which i promise will come sooner than this last one did). I hope you all get a chance to try some of these wines, and please let me know what you think. Until then, good luck, good tasting, and remember...Que Syrah Syrah.
First off a little trick for you. For my recent baby shower I had a box of torrentes (a South American varietal that is somewhere between a viognier and a sauvignon blanc) made by yellow and blue. At a full liter for just about ten bucks its actually a great value. However since most people still have a stigma about boxed wine I simply decanted it into a carafe. Not only was no one the wiser, but when they tasted the crisp and citrusey white wine they were all very pleased.
Also at the baby shower, one of my coworkers brought a couple of bottles of prosecco. This italian style of sparkling wine is a delicious, and budget friendly, alternative to Champagne. My coworker brought two kinds of prosecco actually. The first was Il Colle, definately my favorite of the two. Crisp and light with a ripe apple sweetness and a hint of creme caramel that reminded my of flan, it was truly delicious. The other was less spectacular. A lighter sweeter prosecco from Mionetto. Still good, but better suited for mixing. Perhaps a dash or pomegranate juice and a pinch of cinnamon? Sounds good to me.
While we're on the subject of bubbly I should tell you about a particularily interesting sparkler that I enjoyed with my family recently. A fantastic sparkling red wine that brought back memories of eating wild raspberries right off the bush when i was a kid. Fattoria Il Gambero Alborado. This slightly sparkling, or frizzante if you prefer, wine made from the bonarda grape had a great streak of acidity that perfectly balanced the sweet raspberry flavors. The bubbles were small and delicate and evaporated quickly as the wine made its way over my palate (dare i say it was reminiscent of pop rocks? I dare.)
There were a few more affordable gems to be had over the last few weeks, but i think ill save those for the next blog (which i promise will come sooner than this last one did). I hope you all get a chance to try some of these wines, and please let me know what you think. Until then, good luck, good tasting, and remember...Que Syrah Syrah.
Safe Havens
Greetings fellow oenophiles. I have decided, after much encouragement from my wife, to start a blog about my wine experiences. I figured I would start off by telling you a story about a recent, and somewhat unusual, wine adventure featuring a bottle of Havens Bourriquot 2001.
I purchased said bottle earlier this year with the intention of saving it for a special occasion in the next couple of years. Unfortunately I'm new the wine collecting biz and my storage situation is less than ideal, this poor bottle fell victim to the most terrifying creature imaginable...my wife's cat, Sascha. He must have impeccable taste and a nose for good wine because he decided one day to eat the foil off the neck of my bottle of Havens. No big deal i thought, until i noticed some slight seepage escaping the head of the cork. I figured it would be best to drink the wine now rather than risk the chance of it oxidizing, so my wife and I decided to make a special occasion out of an ordinary Thursday afternoon. "Should we go on a picnic?", we wondered. Sounded like a good idea, but it was getting late in the afternoon and that seemed like more work than either of us wanted to do (I should mention now that my wife is six months pregnant, but has no objections to a glass of wine on occasion). So we decided that going to a movie was the better option. Thats right...a movie.
We weren't merely going to sneak wine into the movies, oh no. We we're going all out for this bottle. We packed the bottle, glass wine goblets, a plum, some crackers and a hunk of Humboldt Fog (an unbelievably delicious goats milk cheese from McKinleyville, CA) into our bag and set off for our "picnic". We successfully got into the movie (Todd Phillip's "The Hangover") without too much suspicious clinking and set out our spread. Fortunately since it was an early afternoon movie on a weekday we were virtually the only ones in the theatre which made it all that much easier to enjoy the wine and cheese. And what a wine. I'm not sure if it was the unpretentious and fun setting or just quality winemaking but the wine was truly spectacular.
Aromas of honey, vanilla, and chocolate laced with hints of raspberry and lavender overpowered any smells of buttered popcorn that were to be had. Bold tannins were present right upfront but faded nicely into long velvety finish. The wine itself was full and round with fantastic chocolate and semisweet dark berry flavors. A touch of leather there adding complexity and the lingering flavor of chocolate covered cherries on the finish made me feel like the stubborn horse for which the wine was named. I refused to take another sip until the last had completely faded. Although a bit hot, I found the Havens Bourriquot to have a very nice balance of ripe fruit and butterscotchey tones of oak.
The movie was good but the wine was definitely better. Of course not every wine experience is that memorable, but thats the fun of it right? You take the good with the bad and make the best of every bottle...even if the cat gets to it first. Que Syrah, Syrah.
I purchased said bottle earlier this year with the intention of saving it for a special occasion in the next couple of years. Unfortunately I'm new the wine collecting biz and my storage situation is less than ideal, this poor bottle fell victim to the most terrifying creature imaginable...my wife's cat, Sascha. He must have impeccable taste and a nose for good wine because he decided one day to eat the foil off the neck of my bottle of Havens. No big deal i thought, until i noticed some slight seepage escaping the head of the cork. I figured it would be best to drink the wine now rather than risk the chance of it oxidizing, so my wife and I decided to make a special occasion out of an ordinary Thursday afternoon. "Should we go on a picnic?", we wondered. Sounded like a good idea, but it was getting late in the afternoon and that seemed like more work than either of us wanted to do (I should mention now that my wife is six months pregnant, but has no objections to a glass of wine on occasion). So we decided that going to a movie was the better option. Thats right...a movie.
We weren't merely going to sneak wine into the movies, oh no. We we're going all out for this bottle. We packed the bottle, glass wine goblets, a plum, some crackers and a hunk of Humboldt Fog (an unbelievably delicious goats milk cheese from McKinleyville, CA) into our bag and set off for our "picnic". We successfully got into the movie (Todd Phillip's "The Hangover") without too much suspicious clinking and set out our spread. Fortunately since it was an early afternoon movie on a weekday we were virtually the only ones in the theatre which made it all that much easier to enjoy the wine and cheese. And what a wine. I'm not sure if it was the unpretentious and fun setting or just quality winemaking but the wine was truly spectacular.
Aromas of honey, vanilla, and chocolate laced with hints of raspberry and lavender overpowered any smells of buttered popcorn that were to be had. Bold tannins were present right upfront but faded nicely into long velvety finish. The wine itself was full and round with fantastic chocolate and semisweet dark berry flavors. A touch of leather there adding complexity and the lingering flavor of chocolate covered cherries on the finish made me feel like the stubborn horse for which the wine was named. I refused to take another sip until the last had completely faded. Although a bit hot, I found the Havens Bourriquot to have a very nice balance of ripe fruit and butterscotchey tones of oak.
The movie was good but the wine was definitely better. Of course not every wine experience is that memorable, but thats the fun of it right? You take the good with the bad and make the best of every bottle...even if the cat gets to it first. Que Syrah, Syrah.