wine: 2007 Conn Creek

So, did you think that forgot how to open a bottle of wine? Nope, we didn't. We just haven't gone out on a limb and purchased a new bottle of wine in the past year (buying 2 cases of St Francis really puts a kink in your wine blogging.) 

This wine costs $35. Not one we will buy again. It's much too vanilla-y for our taste. Put it in perspective, Rombauer Cab is the bomb diggity and that can run about the same price (Mike says it's probably $10 more, but I beg to differ, I swear the last time we bought a Rombauer Cab it was under $40, but maybe it just played with my head at $39.99 (tricky like that).

Anywho, I digress. This wine is not a winner. No oakiness, no spice, no earthy qualities. Upon first taste, I got a headache. Awesome. 

wine time!

Blurry picture = on our way out the door and bringing this bottle with us to a friend's house and I realized we hadn't given it its own photo shoot yet (mistake #1)

I haven't blogged about wine in such a long time that I figured it's time to get the pictures off the camera and talk about them.  You know what happens when you leave pictures on your camera and you don't take notes on the wine?  You forget the specifics (mistake#2). DOH! Well, shoot, taking wine notes was supposed to be my 2012 resolution.

So here's the low down on this bottle of wine:  Castello only sells wine at its winery or through its website.  You can't buy this bottle anymore. We liked it.  We are sad we didn't buy more of the 07 Castello Cab.  Lesson learned - next time we are at Castello di Amorosa, we'll have 2 of everything, and we'll take tasting notes immediately!

Let me break this down to you in math terms:

   blurry picture

+ no wine notes

= good wine, fun times, no mistakes

The good news is that we've found that you really can't go wrong with any Castello bottle, which - if you are following my math - clears away all your previous mistakes.  Yippee!

winery: las positas

Just down the street (OK, 1.4 miles away) from Thomas Coyne is the Las Positas winery - clearly, I paced out the mileage...oh wait, nope.  I just managed to take a picture of a wine marker sign and there you have it, 1.4 miles away. Las Positas is a pretty winery, with a great patio and a few small banquet rooms off the front of the building.  It would be a great place to do an event - Mike does a lot of  events, so we are always on the look out for a new place to hold events, and an added bonus is that they also have good wine.  We had a great time at Las Positas.  Our wine guy was friendly and knowledgeable (and he gave me some dark chocolate to try with one of the wines - that doesn't hurt the perception of the winery either.)  We ended up liking pretty much all of their red wines (not sure why I specified, we never try the white wines, why bother, we aren't big fans...plus most wineries will give you a few re-pours since you didn't try any of the whites so that you get your money's worth at the tasting.) Anyways, we liked them all, but walked away with two bottles of the 2007 Cabernet @ $29 a piece - our favorite wine of the day.

You know how we like 2007 California Cabs?  Yep. It's true.  No surprise then that when we got to Las Positas winery in Livermore that we couldn't wait to try their 07 cab.  And holy bananas! We loved it.  Seriously, I don't know what happened that year (well, in general, it was a pretty sweet year, we did get married that year after all, however pretty sure our wedded bliss has nothing to do with grape growing...) but man oh man, we can't pass up a bottle of 07 wine.  Our wine guy at Las Positas told us that they would soon be sold out of the 07's so of course that meant, we had to snatch up 2 bottles to take home.  We haven't opened them yet, stay tune for that day.

dne eht

(no, that's not pig latin, just "the end" spelled backwards, I figured since Las Positas was backwards I'd give you a bit more...the end.)

just not cutting it anymore: $5 bottles of wine

Houston, I'm in trouble. Yep, trouble.  You know what happens when you start to recognize good wine vs. not - so - good wine?  You really get a taste for the good stuff. And with the good stuff, means gone are the days of enjoying a $5 bottle of wine.  Which is a bit of a bummer. Because although I may like wine (a lot), I also like to be thrifty.  One might say, I like to save money like a squirrel likes to pack away nuts all winter. Only I don't store my dinero in my cheeks.  So, it makes me sad that this bottle will no long put a smile on my face the way it used to. 

The good news is that we haven't gone from $5 bottle of wine taste straight on up to a $35 bottle of wine (although those are really good! Check out Sequoia Grove 2007 Cabernet...our favorite in that price point.)  We have however jumped up to the $11 bottle (on sale with our grocery store discount card) per wine category with the St. Francis 07 Cab.  It's really a top notch bottle of wine for the price. [Read more about it here.] And while you may be wondering why I haven't been featuring any new wines lately, it is because of this bottle.  Our wine frig is brimming with bottles of the St. Francis 07 Cab.  Recently, I saw that our grocery store was starting to sell the '08 Cab instead, so I pushed the  front bottle off to the side, and found 5 bottles remaining of the '07, snatched them up quickly and away I went to check out.  It's that good, people.