Fredericksburg Trip

Stephen and I went to Fredericksburg last Friday to pick up our February wine club shipment from Becker Vineyards. Along the way we stopped at Texas Hills Winery, which is probably one of my favorites in Fredericksburg. They have a really great kick butt cab, orange moscato, and shiraz. They have a $5 tasting fee, which is refunded if you buy any bottle, so we usually end up doing that. This time we bought a half sized bottle of moscato that I thought my mom would like.

We also stopped at the Lost Creek tasting room, where we met a very nice guy who knew a ton about wine. He was the buyer for the tasting room and his job was to visit all the Texas wineries and decide which wines to sell there. How amazing is that! We ended up buying a somewhat expensive bottle of wine from Perissus, which I had never even heard of. It was SO good, more on that in a later post. Ok, already we have bought 2 bottles and we haven't even picked up the 3 we came for!

Whenever we go to Fredericksburg we try to find a new place to try, so this time we wanted to check out the William Chris winery, which is somewhat new. Apparently one of the guys from Woodrose Winery works there now and when we walked in, he actually recognized us! We ended up not staying and tasting their wines because they were 4 tastes for $10. Who do they think they are? Napa?

We also stopped at Pedernales Cellars, which is another place we had never been. This place was a little pricey too, at $12 for 9 wines. Honestly, there was nothing amazing there and we ended up just wasting our money :(.

We decided to save Becker for last, so we went into town to our favorite store that we call "the sample place". I don't even remember the name of this store but there are seriously HUNDREDS of samples of mustards, jellies, dips, salsas, hot sauces, etc. We filled up, checked out another wine store in town with samples, and then headed back out to Becker to pick up our wines.

(here is a picture of us in front of Becker 3 years ago! Wow!)

The cool thing about being in the Becker wine club is that you get to taste their wines for free when you come. Usually, there is a $10 fee for 6 tastes, so we end up getting $20 worth of tastings for free. We share each tasting also, so that way we each get to taste 12 wines. I was a little disappointed to learn that although wine club members save 20% on their wines, there is a $5 processing fee added on to each shipment. Also, we get 3 wines every 3 months, and I am usually charged between $50 - 70, which seems pretty high for only 3 wines. What they usually do is put on of their expensive ones in there and then a medium priced one and a cheaper one.

Here is what we got in our February shipment:

We got an albarino (meh), a barbera (yum!) and the dark one in the middle is a reserve merlot. I was a little disappointed again, because I probably would not have picked those wines and yet I had to pay for them. On our way back home Stephen and I discussed probably quitting the Becker wine club, since we have tried everything they have multiple times and are getting a bit tired of it. Also, we have just accumulated so many wines over the years that we want to only be adding wines that we truly love.

Printhe Shiraz Viognier

This shiraz is from my Christmas wine pack. We have really not kept up with drinking one a month, but at this point we will just stretch it over 2 years instead of 1. I was very excited to try this wine, because Printhie makes a chardonnay which is one of the ONLY chardonnays I like. Just like the chardonnay, this shiraz has some viognier mixed in (5%). I liked this wine a lot, but I couldn't taste the viognier at all (no suprise, really). I immediately thought it had a creaminess to it, and an almost vanilla flavor. It was pretty sweet as well, and an overall pleasure to drink.

One interesting note though: this wine had a ton of sediment! Look at all this sediment when the bottle was finished...

Battle of the Blancs

So I decided to do a side by side tasting and open 2 bottles of sauvignon blancs at the same time and compare them. We decided on 2 random bottles we had, a Kato New Zealand one and a Cameron Hughes wine from the Russian River Valley. Stephen poured us each a small glass of both and we tasted them. The interesting part is that I didn't know which glass was which. Here were my thoughts:

Wine #1:

• pale yellow
• bad smell
• watery flavor, not very good on first taste
• more of an alcoholic burn
• more drinkable though, like a watered down lemonade
• could possibly be confused with a pinot grigio
• after drinking it a bit, I prefer this one since it's simpler

Wine #2:

• dark, bright yellow
• green pepper smell
• very strong taste - maybe too strong with food
• very distinct sauvignon blanc
• smells like a pickle, vinegary

Wine #1 turned out to be the Cameron Hughes wine, and Wine # 2 was the Kato. I definitely liked #2 a lot better, which just goes to show that not all Cameron Hughes wines are terrific. I must say though, that we both tried these wine a day or two later and I thought the CH one was better than it was on the first day. 

Joh. Jos. Christoffel Erben Riesling

I'm not even sure if that is the official name of this wine, there are so many things on the label! We originally opened this wine to use a little bit in some cooking, but it turned out to be sweet and not dry like we thought. We didn't know that much about it, and just got it at the Grapevine sale a year or so ago. It turned out to be very yummy! It seems a bit heavy and sweet, which is not how I'm used to rieslings tasting. It has a very honey like flavor, and is very rich. It is only 9.5% alcohol and very drinkable. I believe this was a bit pricey although I have no idea this long after we bought it. When I looked it up online, the only place I found said it was $40 which means we prob bought it for $25 or so. Although it is pretty good, I definitely would not buy it for that again.

Cambiata Tannat

My best friend in the whole world has moved back to Austin! I am beyond excited, and so I went over to his place to hang out. We are both big wine lovers so we decided to share a bottle. He showed me his collection and we decided on a wine I had never heard of before - a tannat. Apparently this wine is pretty hard to find, and only a few places carry it. He warned me that it would be intense and I almost wanted to wait and try it with food sometime, but we decided to forge ahead and try it. This wine was very good! I am writing this review after the fact, so unfortunately I don't remember specific flavors. However, I remember it being very bold and rich definitely a new type of wine I would like to try again!

Nautilus Sauvignon Blanc

Now THIS is a wine. I have had this wine a few times before, once at McCormicks and Schmidt, and another at a wine bar. Perhaps even a third time at House Wine, I don't remember though. I finally bought Stephen a bottle for his birthday last May and we just got around to drinking it. To me, it is the perfect sauvignon blanc. Sauv blancs are tricky, because sometimes they taste like the infamous cat pee, or green peppers, or water, or occassionally a wonderful blend of citrus. This wine has wonderfully balanced fruit flavors and goes well either with food or completely on it's own. For $17, I will definitely be getting this wine again.

Texas Hills 2005 Syrah

Stephen and I have had this wine for probably 3 years or so and decided we really needed to go ahead and drink it. Texas Hills is quickly becoming one of our favorite Texas wineries, since almost all of their stuff is so delicious.

My thoughts on this wine are that it is VERY good. I thought it was highly acidic, which I like, and has a bit of a tomatoey flavor. Almost a little V8 like, and I don't actually like V8 but I loved this wine. It was also a bit herby. Overall it was just so so good, and Im pretty sure they don't sell the 05 anymore, but I've tasted the more recent syrahs also and they are very good as well.