Flash back to Summer....

I had been torn with my decision on what to blog today. I was on my way back from a great day tasting in Loudon county. I was convinced that I would pick one of the great wineries we visited today and share our experience. However after discussing what we would be making for dinner, my plans got changed.

Our menu was to consist of steaks expertly grilled by yours truly with sauteed onions and mushrooms, and one of my wife's favorite salads. It is a fennel and arugula mix with blue cheese, green beans, and a balsamic dressing. As you can see in the below picture it turned our beautiful. The highlight was the steakhouse onions and mushrooms prepared by my wife. They were cooked in Worcestershire sauce, balsamic vinegar, and soy sauce. With such a beautiful dinner prepared it was my hope that the wine selected for tonight's dinner would stand up to such a delightful meal.

The wine selection for tonight was a 2006 Meritage from Delfosse winery in Faber, Va. It is a blend of blend of classic Bordeaux grapes, Cab Franc, Merlot, Petite Verdot, and Cab Sav. This was then aged 18 months in French Oak, and according to the bottle should age well for about ten years.

The wine displayed a great nose of dark red fruit, earth, and hints of tobacco. It then followed
that up with a black raspberry flavor with hints of burnt tobacco on the taste. The wine had a good balance of tannins and fruit with a smooth finish. Although it may age a few more years it is certainly ready to be drank right now. The nice part is that it is still available for purchase to anyone at the winery and online. Most wineries are on their '08 and '09 reds. It is nice to be able to find a wine that is just getting to the point where it is really good.

Our Tradition Continues...Part Three

With our presents exchanged and me smiling because even a day early Santa got me everything I wanted, It was time to sit and watch a few Christmas oldies while playing a game of phase 10. A few weeks ago my wife had promised me that if I passed my PT test in November, She would make a delicious dessert with bourbon clearly evident in the final product. After much deliberation she decided on a bourbon chocolate fudge. When She ran it by me, I melted at the idea. I love fudge; I love bourbon; Together, how can they go wrong?

So as we settled into the couch for cards and Christmas movies, we each had a saucer of what was to be chocolate bourbon fudge. Unfortunately, the fudge didn't quite get finished hardening so it was more of a chocolate bourbon syrup or pudding. However even in its unhardened state, the chocolaty goodness was delicious. The embedded walnuts were laidened with Gentleman's Jack. It is my bourbon of choice on most occasions and this was no exception.

Now for the good part, the wine pairing. This summer for some reason I had run where several desserts wines made it to my cellar. This is quite unusual if you know me and my tastes. Most often I found tasting and drinking dessert wines very challenging. I like their sweetness and often subtle raisin like flavors, but the burn of the extra alcohol content leaves me less than pleased.

With richness of tonight's dessert I figured it would mask any burn of the extra alcohol. The wine I chose for our Christmas eve dessert pairing was the 2008 Othello from Veritas vineyards in Afton, Va. This wine smelled heavily of raisin grapes. It had cool rich raisin flavor on the pallet, and displayed a light burn of alcohol on the finish. The best part of all is the lack of syrup that often accompanies VA port style wines .

Having read that description, I guess that could be said of many dessert wines from the state. Being this is made of several red varietals I guess I'm disappointed with that description. However, it is probably more to my lack of drinking dessert wines, then of the lack of complexity from Othello. I find that is the experience I have with dessert wines, unless they of the Late Harvest Vidal variety in which I get more honey characteristics.

In the end, The reason I liked this dessert wine was quite apparent, it paired well with our sweet rich flavor of my bourbon fudge. Now if only we could know why it didn't harden properly? Any suggestions from those in Internet land?

Our Tradition Continues....Part Two....

Well if it were for the last game of the season, the Christmas eve Cowboy vs Eagle Football game might have totally depressed me. Dallas was pretty much shutout by the Eagles less a blocked punt and junk touchdown in late game garbage time. Not to mention Tony Romo was pulled by the coach after bruising his hand. However, since that is not the case, I can take solace in the fact that next week equals win and we're in playoff game with the Giants. Forget the fact that we just got beat by the Giants two weeks ago, and Romo could be hurt...this is the playoffs and anything can happen.

However, most of you aren't here to see me talk about football. You want to hear how the rest of our Christmas eve dinner went, and of course about the next Chateau O'Brien Wine we paired with dinner.

The dinner preparation started with decanting our wine choice. We chose the Chateau O'Brien 2007 Vitner's Reserve. It is blend of 48% Cab Sav, 20% Cab Franc, 20% Tannat, and 12% Petite Verdot. As most real VA wine drinkers know, 2007 was a great year for red wine in VA. The summer was long, hot, and dry and continued that way right through the harvest season. Of course, we chose a big red wine because we are breaking away from tradition tonight and having steaks to celebrate our Christmas Eve. As you can see below, my wife took the boneless ribeye steak I had picked yesterday and marinaded them.

Along with the great wines above, my wife made wedge salad with homemade bleu cheese dressing made with Rogue River Blue Cheese(take minute to stop and read about this very special blue cheese...mmmm...mmm...good), and fancy bacon bits crumbled on top. Additionally, she made cooked chard with a lemon and parmesan. The completed plates were almost too good to be true.

Dinner was set on our christmas table, with candles taboot. We had a great conversation that included an intimate discussion on the wine. We agreed the nose of the wine was filled with tomato sauce smell, a slight burn of ripe red fruit. This made us smile as we realized we still had at least one bottle of this awaiting us in the cellar for another occasion.

This wine rounded out the mouth with flavors of ripe red fruit, pepper, leather and earth. It had a well balance tannin structure ensuring it can stand several more years of aging. It lingered long with a hint of mint just on the finish. Overall a great example of VA Red Wine blend, and one that can stand up to any wine around the world.

With dinner served and being enjoyed, Sara and I looked forward to opening the gifts that waited under the tree. Having a taste of the special dessert Sara had prepared to for me, and seeing how it paired with the dessert wine that had been chilling in the fridge. Unfortunately, Gus our little boy cat couldn't wait on the presents either and got a head start. Tune in to part three of this mini-blog series to see what our dessert wine selection was and how it wrapped up our 2011 Christmas eve tradition.

Our Tradition Continues...Part One

From the very beginning of our relationship Christmas Eve was always our holiday. Since we don't have children, we have always found ourselves traveling to spend Christmas with our family so exchanging presents or stocking Christmas Eve just made sense. It has grown to include having Sara make a delicious dinner, and then exchanging presents followed by a watching the traditional Christmas movie "White Christmas."

This year another tradition of ours was a bonus to our Christmas Eve festivities, watching football. Thankfully the NFL got it right this year and didn't schedule any night football games leaving that time for the family to get together. Unfortunately, this year our favorite teams were playing each, Her the Philly Eagles, Me, Them Dallas Cowboys. Thankfully, the early win by the Giants made the game less important, however with Philly pride hanging in the balance it still had important meeting. And with the Eagles spanking the Cowboys in the end, Sara was happy.

To go with this heated rivalry, the wife made a delicious appetizer of Old Bay shrimp cocktail, homemade cocktail sauce, and garlic and herb boursin with crackers.

She had also selected a surprise choice of wine, a chardonnay. Typically we don't favor chardonnays and being such a special occasion we usually reach back in our reserve collection for our wines. However this was no ordinary chardonnay, it came from a favorite of ours Chateau O'Brien. We had picked up this bottle at their Holiday open house a few weeks ago, however it was far from their most recent vintage. This was their 2006 reserve Chardonnay.

No that was not a typo they still have a Chardonnay from 2006.

The shrimp cocktail was fresh, and the homemade cocktail sauce really made the appetizer, however I would hardly recommend doing the old bay boil when preparing your shrimp for cocktail.

This 5 year old Chardonnay grown locally near Markham, VA displayed a nose of butter rich smell. It had hints of fresh lemon juice and herbs.

This wine continued with a burst of acid on the front of the tongue, but aside from that it was very smooth, composed a nice medium body, contain little hint of fruit or oak because of the age, and contain a mineral finish. At points I also detected flower taste like dandelion or buttercup. This wine paired real well with the boursin cheese and crackers. I would recommend this pairing to almost anybody.





Overall this wine has peaked and is probably in the drink immediately stage, but for those looking for non-fruity, non-California chardonnay this would come as a recommend, just don't delay. It is ready right now.

In part two, I'll be covering our Christmas eve meal and selected VA wine pairing. It too is a Chateau O'Brien wine. And for those of you looking a head, there will be a part three where we cover dessert and a rare appearance in my blog of a red dessert wine.

P.S. For you animal lovers, I'm sharing the below photo of my youngest kitty who can't wait to open his Christmas presents.

T'was the day before christmas eve....

Although I had off the day, I was a dutiful husband and dropped my wife at her job this morning.
My day consisted of finishing off a little Christmas shopping I still had to do at Arundel Mills, a lunch date with my wife planned at Cheesetique in Del Ray, and since I was off for the day I was preparing the night's meal. I decided to be lazy and go with a slow cooker meal since I had a couple hours of gift wrapping still needing to be done.

Our menu consisted of a spicy slow cooker chicken, risotto rice with parmesan cheese, and a black bean and corn salad. Although I hadn't made this recipe before I was very excited to give
it a whirl. Since I was chef tonight, I decided to put my wife chief in charge of bar tending for the evening.

She selected a fine cocktail to get the night started, a fine bourbon and coke, but I was really excited for her wine selection. She slected delicious VA white that should match perfectly with the spicy chicken.

Since I won't claim to be a chef extraordinaire I was surprised how well my dinner came together tonight. I took the liberty to check the 2009 Hiddencroft Traminette to make sure it wasn't corked (Ok I just wanted a taste, but any excuse right). The bottle was still a bit cold from chilling in the fridge. The nose came across with a hint of banana and melon with a good balanced acid.

After serving dinner for my wife and I, the wine had a chance to warm a little. It became real floral with hints of honey suckle. It still maintained its delicious acidic balance, but also showed hints of mineral essence on the finish. It has a sweet composite, that ran smack dab through the spicy chicken, the white balsamic in the black bean and corn salad added to the flavor profile leaving a clean fresh feeling through out the mouth. Overall, I thought all parts of the meal complimented in each other.

As a bonus, this Hiddencroft Traminette made a great sipper while watching Cops. It was great relaxing evening heading into what should be an enjoyable Christmas Weekend. Merry Christmas to all my readers.

Virginia wine adds to Curry flavor...

Bringing an end to our usual Sunday night, our laundry was going strong, my wife was up making a delicious dinner, and it was my chore to pick a wine to go with her creation. Tonight's dinner will be a delicious curry with beef. So what region did my wine selection come from????

After great deliberation, I decided on a C-ville favorite White Hall winery. However, with
all their great selections settling on one was a bit tougher. Having not had an exotic grape for a while, I decided on a bottle of their 2009 Touriga National.

It was not a disappointment, the nose was well rounded and complete. It exhibited aromas of vanilla, cardamom, and light red fruit. Additionally, hints of cumin and coriander came through at the end. The wine exhibited warm red fruit with light white pepper flavor. The wine exhibited almost no notable tannins was most prevelent on the front of the tongue. A nice starter red for many non-red drinkers.

The lack of complexity and depth paired well the toned down beef curry. The rice and sugar snap peas rounded out the meal and left that mmm mmm good feeling. This was a nice sunday night meal
and I looked forward to the left overs for tomorrow lunch.

Following the Men with Dark Glasses

We determined that Friday night T.V. has gotten horrible. After enjoying dinner and drinks
with a friend of ours at Shooter Mcgees in Alexandria, VA, and having a busy day of christmas shopping and wine tasting planned tomorrow, the wife and I settled in for some good Friday night T.V.

To our disappointment there was nothing good on, so as we sulked we'd decided on opening some wine and and choose a free on-demand movie. After sorting through the extensive free movie list on Comcast, we pick the 1980 classic, "Blues Brothers." To sooth our disappointment with the T.V. selection we opened a great drinking wine from Chateau O'Brien winery in Markham, VA.






The 2008 Padlock Red was a little less approachable than the previous years vintage, but then again 2007 was a great vintage across the state. The nose was a bit weak with red fruit and spice, but the wine did not disappoint. It displayed red fruit with with firm tannins and many cooking spices. A great tasty treat to share while watching a classic 80's flick.

Old friend spends two nights...

The wife and I usually don't do mid week wine drinking by nature. We enjoy our mid week health kick, however after two long days and I was craving a drink, bourbon would have been my first choice on a night like tonight, but intentionally, I don't leave a stash in the house. My wife had gone out with some girlfriends to celebrate to a birthday and said a night cap would be nice so while watching the DVR'd NCIS we went for our wine stash. Taking a quick look at our everyday wines, we spotted a wine made with some favorite VA varietals from a favorite place in our wall wine rack.

Cuvee Laurent from Delfosse is a blend of two wines that grow particularly well in Virginia Cabrenet Franc and Chamborcin red from Delfosee winery which is just a wee drive south of Charlottesville in Faber, VA.


Night One

Only wanting one glass the first night, we opened the bottle and re-corked it after pouring two glasses. The initial glass smelled of dried red sweet cherries mixed with spice and earth. Taste was very pleasent and a great wine for sipping on the couch. It rang out with bright red fruit, light green pepper mild tannins on the middle of the tongue with a long almost effervessent feel on the middle tongue and cheeks.

Although this wine didn't strike me as having a lot of layers, depth, or width it is great for an evening sipper and left me curious for Friday night when we'd pair it with some grilled bar-b-que chicken pizza.

Night Two

Unfortunately, somehow an additional half glass each seemed to disappear out of the bottle that same night so when Friday came around there was only really one glass left to finish off the rest of the bottle. Instead of having that with dinner, we decided to enjoy it as a pre-cursor as we prepared our bar-b-que chicken pizza.

The couple days in the bottle did nothing to hurt this wine. It smelled of bright red rasberries and a slight burn in the top of the nose. It wasn't probably best sipper and would have been really good with food as it had mellowed greatly. It shared flavors of back raspberries and green bell pepper with just a pop of late tannins as it went down the throat.

It was nice to experience how oxygen can change a wine greatly. It didn't hurt it at all and proves why decanting wine is so important.