Specs Wine Tasting

Last night was Spec's Wine Wednesday and I must say it was not their best. The theme seemed to be wines around the world, since only 2 of the 20 wines were from the U.S (8 were from Italy alone!). Most of them were very dry and had all sorts of weird smells and tastes. We had a wine from Israel that smelled like a certain grass, a wine that smells like corn on the cob or ketchup depending on who you asked, a wine that tasted like you were drinking a glass of Big Red soda and also smelled like cheese, and one that tasted like green pepper. Overall, it was certainly an INTERESTING night. Unfortunately, a full 12/20 wines got x's from me. :( The only wine I ended up liking enough to give a check to was the Marchesi Incisa Moscato d'Asti from Italy.

Oh well, I ended up buying a cheese at least!

Anniversary Sushi

For our 1 yr anniversary, Stephen and I decided to go out for some sushi! Sushi is probably our favorite food, and we had a gift certificate to use and the night off so we headed out to Mikado.

We were staying for a while, so we decided to get some drinks out, which is something we usually don't do at restaurants. But, it was a special night and interesting drinks so we went ahead. Stephen got a small sake (which was terrible to me) and I tried a plum wine, which was great! It was very sweet - a little too sweet, like a dessert wine, but it was a very low alcohol wine. Then, our food came!

I love seaweed salad so much!

The sushi was REALLY great and it was hard to pick our favorites. I believe we got an eel roll, california roll, soft shell crab, and spicy tuna - all of which were amazing. To go along with our sushi, we decided to each order a flight of different flavored cold sakes. Each flight had about 2 ounces of 3 different sakes.

My sakes were pear, apple, and lychee flavored. The apple was by far the best, and the lychee tasted really strange. Pear flavored things are never really my thing, but they all were very interesting to try.

I'm not sure how to really tell Stephen's sakes apart, but there they are! It's cool to see how different sakes can taste. Here they are in case anyone is interested...

Flat Creek Winery

One thing from the past few months that I have to write about is our trip to Flat Creek Winery. We went on May 29th to celebrate Stephen and his mom's birthdays. I always love visiting wineries because they are always so beautiful and the people there are usually so knowledgeable about the wines they make there and it's fun to talk to them.

We shared a tasting of 9 wines, and most of them were very good. Our favorites were the syrah and their meritage, but the super texan was also a big favorite. At the tasting room, the parties sit at small tables and are served by a server. Our server was very nice, but she seemed a little too busy to really chat with us and explain the wines fully. It was still fun though.

After our wine tasting, we decided to have lunch at the small restaurant they have on the property. The food there was really good, and we split a bottle of wine with our meal - our favorite from the tasting - the meritage.

The view was very pretty, and overall it was a really fun and relaxing afternoon. 

Posting again!

Ugh, it has been SO long since I posted, and I am going to try and catch up and keep up with my blog now. The last few months have been so busy with the end of school and the start of summer that I just haven't been thinking about it too much. However, that does NOT mean that I have stopped drinking wine. From now on, I'm going to try to do a better job of keeping up!

Wrongo Dongo

Stephen went out of town for about a week, so I decided to open a bottle just for me while he was gone. When I looked though our collection though, I couldn't find one that I thought he wouldn't care about missing, so I just decided to stop by Specs and get my own thing. I kind of miss buying random wines, since most of the ones we end up getting are ones that we have tasted before either at Specs or at a winery. I had planned on buying a completely random wine, but as I was browsing, I came across this Wrongo Dongo. I have had this wine before a couple years ago and remembered that it was a pretty decent wine at the shocking price of only $6.

I drank this wine over a few nights, and I must say I was not too impressed. It was very harsh and alcoholic when I first opened it, but did soften up a little later on. Still, it was not very good. :( It wasn't terrible, and if I had to buy a wine again for only $6 I would consider it over some of the other $6 wines I had, but overall it is probably better as a once every few years thing.

Campbell's Rutherglen Muscat

Ok, so that 1994 corked wine was absolutely disgusting. Since that bottle was a bust, we treated ourselves to a delicious dessert wine to wash the taste out. This was a 1/2 sized bottle of honey-like muscat. It retails for about $17, but we got it during a Grapevine closing for about $11 I think. This wine was intense! It is very sweet with brown sugar, honey, and raisin flavors. It feels thick and syrupy in your mouth. Surprisingly, it is 17% alcohol, but very drinkable! The sweetness overpowers the alcohol. I think a half size bottle is plenty for this wine, because it still turned out to be 2 small glasses for each of us. Overall, I think this wine was delicious but a little too sweet and syrupy for me.

1994 Chateau Musar

Back in December, our family went to a Christmas Party with some people from Madison's school and had a white elephant gift exchange there. We spotted a few bottles of wine, but the most interesting one was a red wine from Lebanon! I don't think I have ever tried a wine from there, and even though it was from 1994, we snagged it. Well, a few weeks ago we opened a bottle of wine from 1994 and it was terrible! So, we thought we better go ahead and try this one to see what it was like.

Here is what we saw when we took off the foil...

Uh oh... bad news! We had to try it anyway though, and so we poured tastes. The smell was very strong, like raisins. I took a small sip and held it in my mouth for a few seconds. So far it tasted a little weird and I contemplated spitting it out, but figured I should get the full effect, so I swallowed it. NASTINESS! I cannot describe in words how disgusting that liquid was, only that it had obviously turned to vinegar. OH. MY. GOODNESS. In good news though, I have finally tasted my first corked wine, and WOW what an experience. Needless to say, we poured the rest of the bottle down the drain.