2005 Foreau Vouvray Moelleux

So... Stephen and I decided to open a wine tonight and thought we'd clear out one of the older ones we have had for awhile. So we looked and this 2005 french vouvray looked delicious and seemed like it was getting too old for a white. We opened it and loved it! Decided to look it up online and HOLY COW this was an expensive wine! Of course we didn't even notice the sticker on the bottle that said it was 64.99, so here we are drinking probably one of the top 5 most expensive wines we own for no reason. We got it so long ago we didn't even remember. *sigh*

Oh well. Anyway, now that we are drinking it, the wine really is delicious. As I said, we looked it up online and it got 95 and 96 points from wine spectator and wine advocate. It is a sweet white wine with peach and honey notes and a heavier texture than I would expect. It's creamy and very fruit forward. It is a full alcohol wine at 13.3%, but very, very soft and not at all alcoholic tasting.

This is an overall fantastic wine, and although I do not blog often, I had to get on here right away and do this nice wine some justice.

Pictrues to come.

Port Slush

Stephen and I wanted to try something new, and he had this idea to blend wine with ice to make a slush. It was a good idea, but since wine is so low alcohol, our blended drink would probably need some kind of vodka or other mixer to make it a little stronger. Ugh, not a big fan of vodka. So then we had a brilliant idea - let's use port! Port is about 17 - 20% alcohol, so it's perfect! We went to Specs and asked for the cheapest port that was still tasty, and left with a bottle of $5.99 port... yep... that cheap. This is obviously not the $30/bottle kind of port you sip and savor. Then, we poured in half the bottle with 1/2 a bag of mixed berries, a squeeze of lime, a ton of ice and viola! Instant port slush!

I rate this drink an A! It's cheap, very tasty, and I feel like it might be healthier than other mixed drinks you could drink filled with tons of sugar. It tastes very fruity and pretty much like a fruit smoothie. The huge glasses we made were about 2 drinks worth of alcohol. I recommend trying this at home!

Birthday Wine

The day before my birthday, I had some free time so I went to go do something that I love - shop for random wines. I figured it was an early birthday present to myself. I really like just browsing and looking at all the wines, and then buying a completely random one. I went to the Costco liquor store because believe it or not, they have a really good selection of interesting wines. It was fun to look around, and I ended up getting a Vinum petit syrah, which is a wine I'm interested in learning more about.

I haven't had too many of them before, and they are usually used just in small quantities to balance out other wines - its less common to see a bottle of 100% petit syrah.

Another reason I got it was the description: "It is a rich, pomegranate scented monster of a wine which packs a punch yet finishes soft, with concentrated plum, blueberry and supple tannins. The finish is generous and fires on all cylinders, fruit, color, concentration and silky oak tannins at the end." 


The wine was pretty good, but by no means amazing. Other wines I am interested in trying 100% wines of are cabernet franc, and ESPECIALLY petit verdot. I don't think I've ever seen a 100% petit verdot, is it just better as a mixing grape in small quantities?

Ok so I got one more wine too because it was only... wait for it... $3.33. Yes, I had to try it and see how it was. I actually asked someone who worked there what the deal was with that wine and she said it was not bad and many people are come back looking for it again.

So there's really nothing to lose in trying it... it might be ok and if not I'm only out $3! Actually I have been interested in trying super cheap wines lately, so will make a post about that shortly. How can they even PRODUCE wine for that cheaply? I mean, doesn't the bottle and label and other packaging total at least a dollar or two? I'm curious!

Actual Wedding Anniversary

So Stephen and I technically have two anniversaries - one when we signed the papers and became officially married, and one when we had our big wedding/reception. We already celebrated the paper signing in June with our trip to Mikado, and now we are celebrating our "big" wedding anniversary! We had a groupon for Hudsons on the Bend, which is a pretty nice place, so decided to go there.

Our coupon was for two 3 course tasting menus, and there were 2 options for each course, so we decided to just get the exact opposite of each other so we could try all 6 dishes. Here were our appetizers:

a mixed salad with pecan crusted goat cheese and blueberry vinaigrette

and duck breast wrapped in bacon in a dipping sauce.

 

The salad was awesome! SO delicious! That ball of crusted goat cheese was to die for. Then it was time for the main course.

trout with mango jalapeno aioli with ancho paint (???)

and prime tenderloin in a jalapeno hollandaise

The trout was absolutely delicious, and while the beef was also good, the portion size was very small! On to the desserts...

caramel pecan pie dipped in belgium chocolate, 

and peach cobbler.

I am usually a huge dessert fanatic, but neither of these really were that amazing to me. I got the chocolate thing, and just read pecan and chocolate but didn't realize it was a PECAN PIE dipped in chocolate. Those aren't my favorite, and it was very very rich. The peach cobbler was pretty good, but also not my favorite.

Then we came back and opened a bottle of wine, since we didn't get any at the restaurant. Since we used to be members of the Chisholm Trail wine club and had quite a few different bottles, we decided to open one of those. 

This is the 2006 Diablo. It is 70% syrah and 30% lenoir. This wine was pretty good, but not great. I looked online since I forgot how much we paid for it, and for wine club members it is $18. It tasted a tad on the sour side to us - not enough to think it was corked, but just a little weird tasting. It was good overall but it wasn't too interesting nor did it have any defining characteristics. I'm not sure I would buy it again for $18, but I think we actually had 2 bottles of this somehow lol, so I will get to try it again some other time. Anyway, the night was fun, and we played a new game we had, called Quirkle - very fun and just the right amount of thinking for a night like this.

J. Rickard Wine Party

My friend Kris graciously decided to have a bunch of his friends over for a little wine tasting of some of his favorite wines, all from J. Rickard winery in California. He had amassed quite a collection, and we got to try several vintages of the same wines to see how they compared. It was very interesting, and he had some great wines to share!

Of course there were lots of delicious snacks also - here is a close up of the cheeses!

My favorites were the goat gouda on the top rights, and the herby goat cheese on the lower left. A surprisingly good cheese was the goat blue in the middle on the bottom. It was DELICIOUS on crackers and with the wine... oh my goodness I could eat that all day. I'm sure you can tell that I love goat cheese.

On to the wine. The first trio we tried was J. Rickard's 2008, 2007, and 2006 old vine zinfandels (in that order). The 2006 was definitely my favorite (B+) and I said it was very soft and fruity, unlike the other 2. The 2008 (B-) tasted too alcoholic and the 2007 (C+) was very harsh as well. Opinions varied, as they always do, and it seemed like everyone had a different favorite. Stephen thought the 2007 was the best and said it was "tasty, spicy, and challenging", and Kris liked both the 2006 and the 2008 better than the 2007.

Then, we moved on to his 2008, 2007, and 2006 Meritage wines, which are a blend of the 5 bordeaux grapes (cabernet sauv, merlot, cab franc, petit verdot, and malbec). I liked all of these better than the zinfandels, I guess zins are not really my thing? I gave the 2008 meritage a B+, the 2007 a C- (maybe 2007 was not a good year for my tastebuds!) and the 2006 got an A. I do want to say that if I had tasted any of these 6 wines on their own, I probably would have thought they were all good and worth drinking.

Overall, I learned that the older wines were smoother, fruitier, and easier to drink. The younger ones were a little too tannic and alcoholic for my taste, but I bet in a few years they would be better. Something about the 2007 wines was strange to me, maybe the barrel they were aged in, or the weather, who knows.

To top off the night, Kris brought out his Los Ninos Perdidos Port, which was really delicious. I gave the port an A, and I think it was loved by everyone who had some. Also, a fun moment of the night was at the very end when Kris shared some spread that looks like peanut butter but tastes like COOKIES! It was so incredibly yummy!

The night was a lot of fun!

Wine Ice Cream?

I found this article from the Huffington Post about wine ice creams that you can buy and also make!

Wine Ice Cream

What a wonderful idea! :o

Electra Orange Muscat

I gave this wine to my mom for Christmas, and since I went to visit my family yesterday, we decided to open it. It is a very light wine - only 4% alcohol, and a small half size bottle. We thought the wine tasted like pear and it was very sweet and delicious. Because it was so low alcohol, it was very drinkable and I did not even feel any buzz or other effect. It was more like a yummy fruit drink!