WINE TASTINGS!

I shouldn’t have to tell most of you this, but frankly being a grown-up sucks.

First of all there’s the bill-paying, the apartment cleaning, the necessary day-to-day activities of adult life that you can conveniently ignore when you’re the age where you REALLY want to be a Jedi when you grow up. Frankly, I STILL want to be a Jedi when I grow up, but that’s beside the point. All of that crap is crap, but you knew it was going to be crap right around when wanting to be a Jedi changed to wanting to be an accountant (this is a joke, nobody wants to be an accountant, not even accountants).

Worse than all of that though is the fact that being a grown-up means caring about things you really, really wish didn’t exist. Like elections, body-fat percentages, personal finance, and tax laws. All of that stuff, I can conclusively say, is stupid and boring and dumb. Unfortunately, as an adult, it is now part of my life to give a damn about this nonsense. I do not appreciate being made to give a damn about this nonsense.

Luckily for us, there is a cornucopia of ways to distract our adult selves from the obnoxiousness of what we insist is “The Way Things Work.” Some people use TV, some people use magazines, and a few diseased minds cope by immersing themselves entirely in business (I’m looking at you, Boyfriend!) None of these things work for me. TV gets boring fast, magazines get insipid even faster, and my giveadamn gets broken after about fifteen minutes of business news.

So instead, as you all have probably figured out by now, I drink copious amounts of wine.

On April 30’th I went to another wine tasting at the Iron Bridge Wine Company in Columbia. This is a fantastic little restaurant and wine bar frequented by old hippies and current government employees. It is exceedingly small, so don’t expect to just show up for dinner. You must make a reservation. Luckily for me and my Boozery compatriots, you do not need a reservation for a wine tasting, we just Showed Up!

“We” in this case refers to myself, my roommates DesignBroad and Beersnob, GrogLass who is BeerSnob’s girlfriend, Disaster and CartoonSailor. One may ask about these new nicknames. Disaster, you see, is consistently breaking shit in my house. His name is apt. CartoonSailor… well, he’s a cartoon character. You’d have to meet him, but if you do you’ll know. He is a cartoon.

Unfortunately, there was a distinct lack of Spectacular Wines. There were a few Very Good wines, but really only one or two that jumped out and said “I AM SUPER DELICIOUS!”

We began with sparkling wine.  The Chateau Gaillard “Clemence Query” Cremant de Loire was a fantastic Chenin Blanc/Chardonnay blend. It was delightfully crisp, bright, and balanced. It had a few light fruit notes that were pleasantly backed by the delicious yeasty flavor of a truly good sparkling wine. At nineteen dollars, this is too expensive for a graduate student, but ought to fit nicely within the price ranges of those who want to celebrate an event without truly breaking the bank.

On the other hand, the Rialto Moscato completely failed to impress. It was sugary sweet with weak carbonation. It tasted more like a flat energy drink than it did a fine wine. RieslingSnob might like it, but personally I do not find it worth the fifteen dollars it is reported to cost.

The next wine, a Riesling, got me VERY excited, because it was from Eltville am Rhein, the town I grew up in in Germany. Unfortunately, I was unfamiliar with the winery, J. Baumer. It was a middling sweet white with notes of pear and honey. Not being a sweet wines kind of person, I was a little unimpressed. Frankly if it hadn’t had the connection with my childhood, I probably would not have bought it. As it was I bought two bottles. I am not good at impulse control.

The Shaya Verdejo Old Vines white was, according to my notes, “minerally.” This is the only note I have. Unimpressive.

The Dry Creek Fume Blanc Sauvignon Blanc was next, with earthy, barnyard notes in the nose and minerally flavors on the tongue. It would likely be better with food, but as a sipping wine I found it to be a bit too strong on that ammoniac flavor that sometimes happens with Sauvignon Blancs.

I was very pleased with the Tre Monti Vigna Rocca Albana Secco. While the name may be a tongue twister, the wine itself is light, airy, pleasantly fruity, with a little bite of alcohol flavor at the end that keeps things interesting and clean. I very much enjoyed this wine and recommend it highly, though at 16 dollars it is a bit out of my personal price range.

On to the “Rich, Savory, Toasty & Luscious Whites”

The Graham Beck “The Game Reserve” Chenin Blanc was, in a word, “stinky.” In Disaster’s words, it smelled “kinda like feet.” While I’m sure the odor was masking some decent flavors, the key word there is “masking.” I certainly couldn’t taste them.

Daniel Gehr’s “Oak Free” Chardonnay was quite pleasant with minerals and earth, but it CLEARLY wanted to be drunk with food, not as an afternoon sipping wine.

As for Newton Red Label Chardonnay, well… frankly the less said the better. Okay I guess I have to say SOMETHING, fine. It was like drinking old lady perfume. Flowers everywhere. Oh god.

Luckily, I found everything I wanted in the Saint Roche les Vignes rose. It was clean, simple, and light on the palate. Its orangey color was also quite pleasing, and the red fruit notes were subdued by a lovely dryness throughout. Perfect thing for a summers day and a good book.

I have better notes on the reds for one very good reason: The white wines are served on low tables, and there was a huge line behind us. The reds are served at the bar, which is the perfect level to write on, and by the time we got there the line was pretty much gone! Hooray!

Unfortunately, the reds were really not interesting. The first we tried was the Annabella Special Selection Pinot Noir, which I found to be light and unimpressive with no real aftertaste to speak of. Disaster disagreed with me, stating that he caught a distinct floral aftertaste. I contend that it was just the cheese he was eating.

Babcock “Rita’s Earth” Pinot Noir poured a much paler red than the Annabella, and was equally light bodied. It had some decent flavors, but they were quickly washed away. CartoonSailor demanded to know why this wine wasn’t just from Oregon instead of California. It needed body to maintain some of our interest. As it was, meh.

The Col d’Orcia “Spezieri” was equally unimpressive. There was a sharpness at the beginning that brought our hopes up, but the nose was all alcohol and maybe a touch of cola (maybe). CartoonSailor drank his and immediately realized he had not actually tasted anything. Then he knew despair.

Those were the light reds though, and frankly our snobbishness knows no bounds when it comes to demanding strong flavor from wines. The “Big Red Wines That Should Knock Your Socks Off” was a bit better. The Borsao “Berola” was bloody fantastic, I must say. It was a mild, medium bodied red blend that had just enough complexity to keep us interested without beating us over the head with different spices and fruit. This is an excellent sippin’ red, perfect for an evening on the couch watching “Boston Legal” and eating homemade sushi after driving all over the eastern shore of Delaware. In related news, last Wednesday was a good day.

The Chateau Sainte Barbe Cabernet/Merlot blend was a considerably darker color than the Berola, but lacked interest. It was all alcohol on the nose, and frankly didn’t quite have legs.

The Robert Davis Syrah smelled like a stable, but was delightfully smooth and velvety. It was a low impact red, despite the barnyard on the nose. Nice.

The Durigutti Reserve Malbec was nice. Not great, but nice. Mild notes of black pepper overlaid the currents and alcohol.

I quite liked the Maipe Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, which I found to be meaty and delightful despite a sweetness strange to Cabernet. I wanted more. DesignBroad disagreed vehemently, describing it as one of the worst red wines she has ever tasted. I know this cannot be true because I am pretty sure she was there when we drank that strawberry splendor crap during the Cheap Ass Wine Tasting a long while back. Blech.

The Kiona Cabernet/Merlot blend tasted the way nail polish remover smells. No.

The Bogle “Phantom” Proprietary Red was solidly “meh.” It was better after eating a bit of sharp cheese, but for 26 bucks I kind of want a wine that is going to perform a bit better than that.

The day ended with the Conn Creek “Anthology,” which was really very, VERY good. Unfortunately, it was on sale (SALE!) for 40 dollars, and I am not really ever certain that wine is 40 dollars-worth of good. Maybe when I am out of grad school I will think differently, but seriously.

It was a good experience, but frankly the wines were a bit lacking. Disappointing. Iron Bridge Wine Company is one of my favorite places to eat, so I guess my standards were a bit high. Still, I got several bottles of very good wine out of it, thus ensuring that I will have plenty of distractions from the other disappointments of adult life.

OH GOD THESE RIBS ARE SO GOOD SKAFDIWRHKSA

I literally made that sound when eating some ribs made by the Boyfriend this weekend. It was impossible for me to eat those ribs without making little happy sounds the entire time. They were so tender you could cut them apart with a set of tongs. The dry rub was the same one he usually uses, so at first we weren't sure why these were even better than they normally are. We determined that it was because he took them out of the smoker after two and a half hours, and then put the suckers in the oven for the next three, putting a mop-sauce on them every half hour or so. This took a normally fantastic recipe into the orgasmic territory.

I love ribs.

I also love wine, as we all know, but ribs aren't really a wine food, right? WRONG! If you are making spicy, dry-rub ribs, then you want some Black Box Pinot Grigio.

That's right.

Boxed wine.

Most wine drinkers will turn up their nose at boxed wine, but I know better. Have you ever ordered beef burgundy at a restaurant? Even chances that the Burgundy used was from a box. Or perhaps you got a white-wine sauce on your pasta. Probably from a box. Boxed wine is awesome for chefs, because it fits easily on a rack and generally provides a nice, even, "winey" flavor. 

That's all well and good, Stark, but you don't drink cooking wine, do you? Well, yes I do because I don't bloody well cook with wine that I wouldn't drink, but that's beside the point. Black Box actually produces some very pleasant wine. The Pinot Grigio is light, citrusy, and just sweet enough to cool your mouth after a bite of something spicy. It is not cloyingly sweet, nor is it sour, but it also lacks complexity. It's lightly sweetened lemonade, which is exactly what I wanted after eating those utterly fantastic ribs. 

At the moment however I am not sitting in a fabulous house overlooking the Assateague bay, I'm in my house in Bolton Hill, sitting next to a plastic cauldron and arguing about sociology with DesignBroad and Mr. India. This would be less pathetic if I were not sitting across from DesignBroad right now. 

I am drinking a glass of Venta Morales Tempranillo, which is "extremely quaffable" according to DesignBroad. She's right. It's a light to medium-bodied red with a nicely peppery flavor and no aftertaste to speak of. It is not heavily tannic, which I appreciate. Again, not particularly complex, but quite pleasant.

Tomorrow I'm going to show the schizos at work The Great Pumpkin. That should be pretty cool. Until then, continue drinking!

Everybody's working for the weekend

The last two weekends have been spectacular. I don't know if I mentioned the Offspring concert I went to, but I should have. Holy shit, I love that band. I was sad they weren't headlining, though, because they ended up just playing a handful of their big hits instead of Nothingtown, Rise and Fall, and Trust in You, which are three amazing songs that don't get played often enough outside of my own car.

Anyway. There is a strange thing I have noticed about beer at sports and concert venues. First, it is always American lite beer. Coors, Miller, and Bud are pretty much the only options. Occasionally you'll find Bud Lime, which tastes like someone once described drinking a corona with lime to a person who had only ever eaten lime jolly ranchers before. Even so, Concert Beer is delicious. Partially because you end up wearing it when someone elbows you in the arm, I think. Same goes for Baseball Beer, perhaps doubly so, since it was so brutally hot this weekend, and at least Jiffy Lube Life (worst. name. ever.) had some ventilation coming down from the stage.

Would you know, I have never been to a losing Orioles game? This weekend was no exception, when my boyfriends family took me out to Camden Yards. It was a good game too, some spectacular plays (are they plays in baseball? I do not know) were made. The seats helped too! We were right next to the news box, right behind home plate. I could actually read the names on the backs of their shirts!

I want to make a joke about Luke Scott or Ty Wigginton but I really don't have one right now.

ANyway. We have begun a tradition at our apartment (apparently we're Land Otters... I don't know. Design Broad and I probably shouldn't be allowed to name things while we're at work/school) of having Sunday Night Dinners. This past weekend, Design Broad made vegetarian chili, and her friend Riesling Snob brought the wine. He brought a very pleasant Blue Vin Riesling from the Mosel valley that had been recommended to him by the wine people at Corridor. It was very light, very pleasantly balanced. It had a citrus tartness as a counterpoint to the honey, which was not terribly cloying. It was really good with the chili, which was not as flamingly spicy as Design Broad wanted, but hey.

We also had an exceptional Lan Crianza, which was at its peak of drinkability according to the handy little graph on the back of the bottle. I love it when wineries add SCIENCE to their packaging. They're marketing their way right into my booze-sodden little heart. This was a very peppery, very smooth wine with a finish like crunching into a black peppercorn. It was not terribly heavy bodied, but the velvety mouthfeel added a lot of class.

Basically what I'm saying is that it was way too fucking hot for that wine, and we need to get some of it for the fall. The Internet is saying good things to me about the price, so that's reassuring. I love it when good wine is under 15 bucks.

Next Sunday Night Dinner will be chicken thighs with apples braised in hard cider. There is no smiley emoticon big enough to express my joy.

Cazbar and Sparkling Wine!

On Thursday I had the very good luck to go to Cazbar, a delightful Afghani place in Baltimore that I have no idea how to get back to because DesignBroad took Rt. 40 into the city and I never go that way. I'm going to have to figure it out at some point though, because holy crap, what great food. I got these little tender dumplings, covered in yogurt and some kind of spicy sauce and some wicked tasty cigar pastries. Oh god, so delicious. Go there like right now if you live anywhere near Baltimore.

I also got a glass of Peared Champagne, one of Cazbar's signature cocktails. It was recommended to me by the waiter, and was, at 10 dollars, the most expensive drink on that menu. It was a mixture of Champagne and Grey Goose pear vodka, and I think a drop of pear liqueur. Luckily for me, I am pretty sure I can recreate it using delightfully cheap materials!

Last nights dinner was something less epic. Take out Chinese food paired with Gloria Ferrer Sonoma Brut sparkling wine. That's actually a pretty great pairing, the MSG and hot pepper laden General Tso's chicken brings out the tartness of the wine in a way you wouldn't expect, and the happy fizzy bubbles remove some of that sickly sweet aftertaste you get from cheap Chinese.

Also it's just a really nice bottle of wine. Sparkling anything on a Friday night is just delightful, whether it's at a bar or in your own home.

This weekend is a weekend of No Plans, which could be nice or could make me go completely mad. We'll find out which later!

It's like the damn alps out there

Holy science, this snow is going to be here until May. It snowed again yesterday, but luckily there was no accumulation in our area. Still, driving is kind of terrifying. Most two lane roads are reduced to one-and-a-half lanes, and I live in a suburb overly fond of SUVs. The snow banks on the sides of the road are around 5 to 6 feet high and about as hard as concrete, and cause a constant disturbance in the peripheral vision.

Basically what I'm saying is to hell with this.

The B's only recently got their street plowed after our SECOND blizzard of the week, so we grabbed them and dragged them over here for choucroute night. For those of you that don't know, choucroute is French peasant food, basically what you have when you've got 1) a dead pig and 2) an old cabbage. It's sauerkraut and pig parts. It is also so freaking huge that it was a two-night deal. The first night I ended up skipping out on due to an invite to Max's Tap House from BeerSnob.

Naturally, Max's Tap House was preparing for their BelgianFest and the vast majority of their taps were being kept empty. LAME. I ended up with a Noble Pils. BeerSnob (shown below) ordered his usual range of stouts, and the rest of us sort of fiddled around. DesignBroad (shown below, looking highly displeased) got the Three Philosophers, the one that involves more yeast than a whore at a french bakery.

 

Don't be fooled by that wine glass. That's beer she's drinking. Max's often serves its higher-end beers in wine glasses, I suppose as a combination of better surface area and lower cost to the bar. Still, it makes one feel particularly silly, as Wellington TNT gladly shows.

PINKY OUT, DAMMIT.

It was quite fun, though the beers were disappointing, so there will be no beer report. Later in the week The Boyfriend showed up for some snowboarding! I love mountains and skiing and pretty much everything about it, and this time I did notice some actual improvement in my technique. I'm not exaggerating my movements enough. You'll notice that the downhill pro's look like they're leaning impossibly far over when they turn, that's because it's the most efficient way to do it. Long story short, The Boyfriend managed to get down a slightly more advanced green run without injuring himself! Hooray!

 ...And then he became the Snow Ninja. That's what happens when you are forced to sneak schnapps into dry counties. Snow Ninjas appear to avenge their beer.

That night was Choucroute II: Choupocalypse, also known as MOAR PORK. Before dinner, we had a sort of bastardized kir royal, made with the really delicious Rondel Pura Raza Cava and my raspberry liqueur. They blended really nicely, the dry Cava and the bubbles neutralizing the super sweetness of the liqueur. It was also pink, which was fitting because Valentines was the next day. I highly recommend that Cava to anyone looking for a nice sparkling wine on the cheap, which probably goes to prove my intense love for Spanish wines.

With dinner we had WILLM Pinot Gris. I may be in love with this wine. It is nice and pleasantly fruity up front, but the aftertaste is... well... fishy. In a good way, mind. It's like the aftertaste you get after eating a really, really nice piece of sashimi. I need to get a bottle of it next time I make Spicy Death Salmon.

Cheap Ass Wine Tasting!

So last night I gathered together some of my closest friends and had a Cheap Ass Wine Tasting!

It was a blind tasting, which means we got to feel especially classy drinking out of paper bags and solo cups that BeerSnob stole from his roomie. The goal of the event was to have everyone bring an under 15-dollar bottle of wine, blind taste them, and when they are revealed we could be all "oh shit! this was delicious and now I know what to buy!" I described it at the time as "when you want to get crunk... classily."

The real class was provided by DesignBroad (no I couldn't think of a better nickname hon it is eight AM and I am hungover), who knows a crapton more about tasting wine than I do. The crunkness was brought most handily by Mr. The Bhomb, who brought his own infusions. His strawberry chocolate smelled amazing and tasted really good, though the cinnamon vanilla SEARED MY MOUTH LIKE THE FIERY WRATH OF GOD.

The apartment was provided by BeerSnob, who also provided a snobby beer for us to try. Rounding off our cast of characters was The Irish, Wellington TNT, and The Crazy. The Crazy's boyfriend, Nerdling 5000, was unable to join us because he was doing something unspeakably nerdy at the time.

So I numbered the bags of wine pretty much at random, but this is what we ended up with, more or less in the order that we drank it. I'm gonna start with

THREE PHILOSOPHERS

 

Apparently it's a "Belgian Quad flavored with cherries." Only BeerSnob was able to detect any cherry in this, everyone else was distracted by the literal pockets of yeast that were floating in it. I don't know about you, but I find it rather distressing when I feel like I should have baleen to help drink a beer.

Our first wine of the night was the intensely disappointing and actually kind of creepy STRAWBERRY SPLENDOR

 

This poured BROWN. Not red. BROWN. Like we're talking dried blood brown. It smelled like jam, it tasted like jam. DesignBroad claimed that it tasted like her dad's homemade strawberry jam, which is far more complimentary than this crap deserved. It tasted fake and overly sweet and seriously gross. We thought that it *might* be an okay gluhwein or mulled wine, but it was so sickly no one but Wellington TNT would finish their tiny pour. After revealing the bottle, we realized that it had "natural flavors added." That's EXACTLY what I want in a wine, eeeeyup!

Moving on from the grossness was wine number two!

MARQUES DE CACERES WHITE RIOJA

 

 Pretty much everyone liked this, which surprised a few of the people who normally only like reds. It's very citric and very mild. It's dry but not tannic, which The Crazy described as "watery." It's a very easy drinking wine, but not in a bad way. Design Broad thought that it was a very young Chardonnay, "like, Dumbo rides at DisneyWorld young." Turns out that it was some Spanish estate grape that I, in my inebriation, failed to write down. GO ME!

337 Cabernet Sauvignon

The Irish bought this wine entirely based on it looking cool, and it's hard to deny that it looks cool. It smelled extremely sweet with an overlay of alcohol fumes that I've come to associate with Cabernet Sauvignon. There was a distinct fruit flavor, like tart blackberries or black raspberries, and a hint of vanilla that was throwing me off completely. It was one of those wines that smells nothing like the way it tastes. It smelled harsh, but it was pretty mellow. I'm not overly fond of Cabernets, I don't like that alcohol smell, but this was pretty alright.

REDTREE PINOT NOIR

This smelled a little peppery and a lot sweet. It was a very clear red and had a very mild taste. It was extremely easy drinking, probably too easy. There was almost no aftertaste, which The Irish liked, but it made it very hard to determine what flavors besides "red fruit" were going on in there. It was Pinot Noir with training wheels on, and would serve as a passable introduction to red wine, or something to serve to people who don't normally drink wine but want to be seen drinking it for some reason.

MARQUES DE CACERES ROSE RIOJA

I've reviewed this one before! It was my contribution, along with the white from the same winery, and I loves it. DesignBroad had the typical reaction of someone who has never had a good European dry rose. When people see rose they think "white zinfandel from california fruit bomb sugar 'splosion." This stuff, as I've said before, is buttery, smooth, and dry with a nicely balanced fruit flavor. I have bought it before for 15 bucks a bottle, but found it at a more different liquor store (Jason's on Rt 40 for y'all in the EC) for 9.95. I CAN DIG IT!

Last, and probably least, is the BOHEMIAN HIGHWAY  CALIFORNIA CHARDONNAY

 

 It's got a great label, I've got to say. Sadly the wine tastes as green as the bottle, and by that I mean it is sauerkraut wine. It seriously tasted like sprouts with sugar on top. It was sickly. My fondness for sauerkraut notwithstanding, this wine needed to go down the drain.

So there you have it! We liked the Marques de Caceres and the 337, and I'd recommend the RedTree if you have a friend who refuses to drink wine. Avoid Goose Watch and Bohemian Highway at all costs, which should not be hard, because all of the wines above were less than ten dollars. Save your wallet: drink cheap wine!