Domaine Bellevue 2010 Touraine Rose

Everything that I like seems to come from the Loire valley anymore.

Seriously, the sparkling I liked at the wine tasting, the last two white wines that CartoonSailor or Disaster brought over to my house, and this rose. All delicious, all from Loire.

This particular rose pours a vivid pink. It is precisely the color of the wickedly spined briar roses that grew everywhere in Eltville, the town I grew up in. It has a refreshing, citrusy smell, rather like limes with a tiny touch of raspberry. It is a little bitter up front, followed by tartness, and it leaves a refreshing taste in the mouth. Unlike many rose wines, this has very little berry sweetness. It is tart and clean all the way through.

Delightful.

Soon I will have the opportunity to try a different variety of wines. The Boyfriend and I are going to California for a week. We will be near-ish to Monte Ray, I am told, and at some point will be visiting Napa for some wines. Frankly, I am relatively certain that I will love California so much that I will not want to leave. They have artichokes, wine, and seafood. That is basically all I ever want in this world. Avocados too, I suppose, but I'm pretty sure they have those in a different part of California, yes?

I am very bad at geography. VERY bad.

Pesto and White Wine

The one lovely thing about living away from ones parents is the sudden ability to cook exactly what you are craving at any given moment. The one problem about living away from my parents in particular is that my father is such a stunning cook that everything I make by comparison is bland and unfortunate.

Of course, he has a lifetime of experience more than I have, and he probably has the sense not to use homemade pesto on rotini of all things. What was I thinking?

For those of you who don't know (and those of you who should but are just ignorant doofuses, and I'm looking at you here, BeerSnob), there is actually a very good reason for the wealth of different shapes for pasta. Each shape is designed to be a very specific sauce-delivery mechanism. Rotini is good for creamy sauces that would fall off of spaghetti, but terrible for thicker sauces like this particular pesto I made. The Pasta to sauce ratio is sadly lacking. Also? It needs more garlic.

Though, I will say, the sardine toasts I made taste AWESOME with a spread of this pesto. I know what I'm having for lunch tomorrow!

With this pesto and sardine-toast monstrosity, I am drinking Picpoul de Pinet Couteaux de Languedoc. If you're looking for a cheap, dry white that won't scare the neighbors, this is it. When you open the bottle (a screw cap, which honestly I'm starting to like more and more) you are instantly hit with the aroma of apple cider. The apple sweetness on the nose is not indicative of sweetness in the bottle: it is quite tart, blood oranges up front with a touch of that yeasty flavor you get from a particularly good bottle of champagne on the finish, which is not particularly long or complex, but smooth and pleasant. It has a very prickley mouthfeel. It makes the finish cleaner, the flavors crisp where they could have gotten stodgy. It handily brings out the garlic in the pesto I'm eating, which is really useful, since it lacks flavor.

Oh well, nothing for it but to try again. Luckily, basil is cheap at this time of year, and the Boyfriend's basil plant is freaking HUGE. No, that's not a euphemism. The basil and pineapple sage in his garden are merging into one massive plant of deliciousness. I am so jealous, since my basil plant died a spindley death.

I will try this recipe again, probably with better nuts (oh yeah, did I mention that I used walnuts too? yeah pine nuts are expensive and I'm a graduate student). The wine, on the other hand, will remain the same. This is a fabulous house white, and I would recommend it to anyone.

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.

Okay, this is getting silly.

So, Stark. Why haven't you been blogging?

Well, Internet, I've been kind of busy. In the past few months I've been moving in to an apartment in Baltimore, in a neighborhood called Bolton Hill. If you're a Baltimore person, it's right next to MICA. This past weekend was Artscape, and thusly my neighborhood was flooded with hippies of all stripes and colors. Most memorable was the homeless dude who decided to do some late-night yoga in front of our fence. Better than peeing on it, I suppose.

I've also had the opportunity to go back to Centro Tapas Bar, a narrow place in Federal Hill with astoundingly reasonable prices and absolutely amazing food. The only problem with this place is that whenever I try to get there, I end up lost and in the ghetto. This time my epic travel fail involved screwing up the light rail system and ending up in Sandtown. THAT WAS AWESOME.

Stark, you may well ask, how the hell did you end up in Sandtown trying to get from Bolton Hill to Federal Hill? I HAVE NO IDEA. I AM REALLY BAD AT THIS SORT OF THING. IT IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM.

Anyway. By the time we got to the restaurant, it was still totally worth it. The tapas at this place range from 3 dollars to 12 dollars, most of them capping out at about 8 bucks. Whenever I go, I make sure to get a plate of cabrales, a delightfully stinky blue cheese, and some boquerones, pickled and marinated white anchovies. Fabulous. The bread that comes out as an appetizer is wonderfully crusty and flaky, and it comes with a pimento and smoked-paprika olive oil for dipping, which pairs beautifully with a glass of Dibon Brut Reserves sparkling wine.

We also ordered approximately seven buckets full of red sangria. We never got water, an oversight by a frantic waitress, and so I ended up drinking sangria every time I wanted something to cool my mouth off with. I regretted this the next morning, but man, that was some good sangria. With my dinner (mussles and lamb meatball skewers, shared with Mr. India) I ordered a glass of peppery viognier, which paired fabulously with the mussels. At the end of the meal, the Boyfriend ordered a little caramel custard. It was good on its own, but if you took a bite with a mint leaf and washed it down with a spicy ale, it became the Best Desert Ever.

I recommend this place highly, the wait staff is fun, the prices reasonable (dinner and extraordinary amounts of wine for myself and the boyfriend came out to just under 75 bucks), and the food is amazing beyond belief. I recommend the Arepa Mechada, a corn cake topped with oxtail, avocado and fried egg.

In other Drink With Stark adventures, I found a liquor store on North Charles called SPIRITS and I am in love. It is full of wine, cheap wine, cheap and delicious imported wine. I got a bottle of French sparkling rose (still not champagne) and a bottle of cava, both for under 13 dollars. JACKPOT. It's not a difficult walk from the house, either, though the streets may become a little harder to cross when they're not barricaded for Artscape.

Also distracting me from updating this blog is the fact that I am engaged in writing Rising Mind again. This version is significantly darker than the NaNo. I will probably post excerpts, because I can.

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.

Burn Notice!

Burn Notice marathon! Hooray!

I love that show, despite the terrible acting and the complete absurdity. It's not as bad as NCIS, but it's still amazing.

I got to taste some Mouton-Cadet a while back. All three were really good, though I liked the rose best. It was all raspberries, and I do love me some raspberries.

I've also recently found a few recipes for brewing my own deliciousness. BeerSnob sent me a link to a site all about making your own hard cider. I'm really not all that attached to beer, but I adore hard cider. In Ireland, I got to drink Magners on a regular basis, and I have yet to taste any hard cider that stands up to it. Woodchuck makes a variety called 802 which is closer to the mark than anything else I've tried. Still, hard cider is hard to make gross. Even when it's not good it's still sweet and drinkable. This makes me think that I can get away with making it myself!

I have also found a recipe, provided by ICSA, for chicha, which is apparently rainforest potato beer. I asked the Boyfriend, who has spent some time in Ecuador, but apparently it's a Brazillian thing. According to the ICSA entry, it tastes like sweet potato pie, only it's mildly alcoholic and kinda beer-y. So apparently I need to do some serious SCIENCE up in here!

The Hogfather and Incas

Sunday was a good day all around, but mostly for the way it ended: a bottle of wine, a Boyfriend, and a BBC adaptation of Terry Pratchett's The Hogfather. If you're looking for a three-hour long movie to waste an evening with, this is pretty much it. The special effects are awful, but the sets, costumes, and acting are all so awesome you can't even complain.

For the wine we selected a bottle of Inca torrontes/chardonnay blend. It cost about 9 bucks, but Boyfriend insisted that it was pretty good. When first uncorked it smelled exactly like orange juice. When poured... well, it still pretty much smelled like orange juice, but maybe a bit sweeter. When consumed... Tang. It was Tang-flavored wine. That is a lot better than it sounds. It was a very easy drinking wine, clean and light and enjoyably sweet, but not syrupy. For nine bucks a bottle? Sure. I'd buy it again.

Boyfriend also had a bottle of pumpkin ale, which, naturally, I can't recall the name of. Most pumpkin beers have this weird, sugary smell and a bizarre aftertaste. This... not so much. It smelled like spiced beer and tasted like pumpkin bread. Not a Starbucks pumpkin muffin sugarbomb, but like pumpkin bread. It was roast pumpkin and spices. No sugar. The cinnamon and nutmeg aftertaste actually ended up being nice and clean, not cloying at all.

Of course, I only had one sip of it. The Boyfriend's father tasted some and said "That wasn't bad. I don't want any more than that sip, but it wasn't bad." I've got to agree with him there.

In other news, I am so far behind in my NaNoWriMo project it ain't even funny. There's a guy at my school almost halfway done already. I'm seven thousand words in and feeling accomplished, then I see that. Holy crap. he must be a machine.

Punkin' Chunkin'!

First, yesterday was a good wine day. I got to try two merlots at the restaurant. One was a decent, aromatic, medium bodied and had a good taste of dried fruit. I can't quite recall which one that was. The other was a Kendall-Jackson grand reserve merlot, and it was fantastic. It was the kind of wine that you *could* drink with a meal, but it would almost detract from how tasty the wine was. I thought about trying to get various flavors and scents from it, but I was too busy enjoying the experience.

I also liberated a half bottle of Entrada sauvignon blanc from a party of pharmaceutical people. Lucky them. I might even bring it back to the restaurant. It smells like sugared pears and tastes like sugared pears steeped in vinager. Thank you very much, Argentina, but I'll stick with your malbecs.

Speaking of malbecs, I also had a lovely glass of Terrazas malbec at the Boyfriends house. He and I first had this wine at Fogo de Chao, which is basically a fat kid's paradise. Made of meat. He fell in love with its spiciness and full body, and buys it whenever he thinks he may be cooking red meat. It really is a lovely wine, especially with lamb.

In other news, today I went to the Punkin' Chunkin, which is basically an engineering frat party. The idea is to build absurdly powerful machines to fling pumpkins up to 5,000 feet. There are centrifuges, air cannons, catapaults, and trebuchets. My favorites are the air cannons, which get the best distance and look the most impressive. My god, the Old Glory and the Young Glory III had hundred foot barrals! The best named air cannon was probably the Second Amendment Too, which also had a rediculous barral.

Possibly the greatest thing about the punkin chunkin is the bizarre mix of people. You have the engineering clubs who build the machines (or, in the case of one group, genetically engineer pumpkins to go farther), the Harley riders who help sponsor the event, fratboys who just want the excuse for a tailgate party, and D&D nerds who are jealous of the useful skills that the engineering nerds are displaying. I know I saw at least one gang member there, and Boyfriend claims to have spotted several undergound biker gang signs. It was a surprising group, but it reveals a universal truth: nothing brings people together like the promise of artillery.

Sadly, the event was BYOB, and Boyfriend and I did not realize this, so we went drinkless for the entire event. No matter, for now we have both consumed a bottle of Blue Moon, and he is napping on the couch while I type. It is a good day.

Rheingau Riesling Rocks

Nothing makes you want to drink more than waiting tables. If the service industry does not turn one into a raging misanthrope, it certainly turns one into an alcoholic. I enjoy working large parties, because most of the time people are so busy chatting with each other that they forget if I screw something up. Unfortunately tonight I was the only waiter who spoke English reliably. The others spoke only French. I was the only native English speaker in the entire staff that night, actually. It's depressing. I can't imagine how it feels to be in an entire country like that, divided off by language all the time.

Actually I can. I grew up in Germany. I learned enough German to get by, but I could only actually make friends with the other Army brats. Still, what a beautiful place to grow up in! We lived in a small town by the Rhein in a red sandstone castle (not kidding) within walking distance of the vinyards. We used to run around the vines and generally irritate the vintners as kids. It was good times.

It is impossible to get Eltville whine in America. They don't export it. This is a sadness for everyone who loves sweet riesling or spaetlese wines. It's hard enough to find good Rheingau wines at all, most riesling seems to come from the Mosel valley or somewhere in heathen France. I updated about our last bottle of Rheingau riesling earlier in the blog and was unimpressed, but my mother managed to find a bottle of riesling from a vinyard only a few miles down the road from our village: Schloss Vollrads.

I am not normally a fan of sweet wines. I find that most rieslings taste either like honey or vinegar. This, however, is very tasty.

It has a faint, fall appley smell. It is a very sharp wine, light bodied and  almost feels like it's pinching your tongue. It tastes like apples that have been macerating in sugar. It is a very fall drink, it conjures up images of fires, blankets, and early snows. I am enjoying it.

This weekend should have been much more interesting in terms of bottles being opened. it was MetalChef's 21st birthday party, after all. I gave him a gift of the cinnamon-apple infusion (formerly the apple-botulism infusion) and we all had a bit of a taste. Wow it was good. I probably over-sweetened it, which is unfortunate 'cause I definitely don't have a record of how much simple syrup I actually used. The cinnamon aftertaste was strong, almost, but not quite, overpowering. I almost think I should have used a stronger tasting apple. I used a Fiji apple when I should have used Granny Smith. I hate eating Fiji apples though, while if there is a Granny Smith available I am probably already eating it.

Anyway, the big problem at that party was that I decided to layer a bottle of hard cider on top of questionable alfredo, which was itself layered on top of a knot of seething, unthinking rage. This is not a recipe for success, and I found myself quite unable to continue drinking after a bottle and a half of cider. What a shame.

On Saturday I had an overly sweet margarita sno-cone at the Greene Turtle in Ocean City with the Boyfriend after watching Zombieland, which was a surprisingly excellent movie.  There was an exceptional band playing there called Pompous Pie. They were not exceptional for their music, which was decent, rather for the volume at which it was played. For some reason the Greene Turtle on Rt. 611 feels that they need to provide music for the entire eastern shore, and turns up their speakers appropriately. I just want to have a terrible boat drink and chat, you bastards!

A very "meh" weekend.

 First, let's get on-topic. I have a bottle of Kendall-Jackson chardonnay here, and it is quite tasty. Not sweet, sort of off-dry. It has a cranberry sort of tartness and a lightly floral aroma and is heavier and spicier than a lot of whites I've been drinking. I also threw together a caramel-apple and a ginger snap infusion, but since I don't have pictures of them I won't bother talking about them much.

Other than the wine, this weekend was not a successful alcohol weekend. I had a tasty tequila sno-cone on friday at DuClaw, where Boyfriend drank an extremely disappointing beer. BeerSnob may disagree, but both Boyfriend and I found the Hellraiser IPA to be a one-note failure as a beer.

Of course, we then went on to drink Keystone Lite at the college, where Boyfriend's friend was having his 21st birthday. What an epic shitshow that was. The birthday celebrant was blacked out by 5 pm, but somehow managed to stagger to the bar at midnight for his birthday round. We have received word that he is not, in fact, dead of alcohol poisoning, nor did he have to get his stomach pumped. Good job, dude.

Things like that make me really glad I had my 21st birthday in a foreign country where no one knew me nor cared to know me. My flatmate threw a party and trashed the apartment, and I drank a few beers at an Brog, but that's about it. Not very interesting, but there was no horrifying intoxication. Granted, I experienced horrifying intoxication later during a pub crawl in England, but I feel fortunate that I escaped the stereotypical 21st birthday shitshow.

Also, WOW is alcohol expensive in restaurants. One of my tables tonight easily ordered a hundred and fifty dollars worth of wine, knocking back overpriced by-the-glass selections like it was their job. I love it when people do that, because it means I get paid for watching the bartender work, but seriously. Where are these people working where they make enough money to spend that much on a night of not-immoderate drinking? Can I have their jobs? Please?

I have become a huge fan of ordering one or two drinks and a dessert in restaurants. The bill stays low and I am satisfied.

Weekend Wangst and Renfest Ranting

I am not a romantic person. I used to be, but I am not any longer. I do not believe in true love, painless relationships, or fairytale endings. I do my best not to get soppy about idle things like boyfriends.

I am in a long distance relationship with a guy I met in college. We first met when his roommate drunkenly cartwheeled through my locked and dead-bolted dormroom door. He assured me, looming and loud, that he was not drunk at all, that he was just keeping Roomie from killing himself. Yeah, okay large bearded man. You smell like a distillery. Get out of my doorway.

Our relationship in college was just about perfect. We had our own groups of friends, we could go hang out with others and return to one another in the evening. It's harder now that he's three hours away. He visits me on weekends, or I visit him, when I have weekends off. I work in a restaurant, I don't usually have weekends free. He works in publishing. He only has weekends free. Badass, huh?

"Oh to hell with you, Stark." some would say. "Three hours? Only on weekends? What about the folks with family in the military? What about the people whose loved ones are journalists halfway around the globe?" to these people I say "oh screw off. Just because other people have it worse doesn't mean it suddenly doesn't suck."

These issues now addressed I feel that I have kvetched sufficiently and shall immediately return to my topic.

The Maryland Renaissance Festival may be best treated like a giant outdoor theme pub with a heinous cover charge. That's how I like it, at least. One goes to drink the cheap beer (or hardcore cider in my case. I loves me the cider) and socialize. The Boyfriend always gets sulky at the renfest, because they have not had a new act there in decades and all my friends want to do is see Hack and Slash for the millionth time. I do not exaggerate. They see every show at every time slot every time they go. They recite the lines along with the actors. I know it's ritual and all, but god damn, Fight School is on at the same time, and they actually do good improv! And they have that one cute guy in a kilt!

So instead of sitting through the same four acts, BeerSnob, Boyfriend and I sat in the various pubs, singing along with the meandering minstrels (they don't really travel, the entire park is only a kilometer squared), and discussed with rising horror the travesties of cleavage that surrounded us. Boobs should not look like tiny, flabby shelves! Ladies, if you want to wear psuedo renaissance gear, you are probably already spending a couple hundred dollars! Do not spend those dollars on gear that makes you look thirty years older (boob-squeezer tops) or like a low class whore (horse tails or fox tails).

Also, if pregnant, please do not wear nothing but a bra and booty short leather armor set. While I understand that motherhood is beautiful and all that nonsense, when you're eight and a half months along... you make BeerSnob cry.

It is also a fact that any drink tastes better coming from a proper mug instead of a plastic cup. So I bought a proper, stoneware quaffing mug. Because if I don't spend money on something idiotic at the renfest I feel I have not had the true experience.

I also got a chance to do a quick wine tasting from a Maryland vineyard. Wow those were some sugary wines. The only one that did not taste like a cordial was the sangria. I have not had a whole lot of experience with my local wineries, there seems to be some kind of prejudice against them right now since they are all so new. It is something I'd like to get more into, there must be someone out there making less syrupy wines.