Señor Oscar

Oscar night calls for 3 things:
Wine
Cheese
Betting against your husband on our Oscar Ballots.

The winner gets: bragging rights for one year. I beat him handedly last year, here's hoping for the winning streak to continue.

Tonight's wine choice is a good one, I'd highly recommend it. Sequoia Grove never disappoints, it's a bit pricey but we've become serious snobs in the wine department making us buy more expensive bottles and drinking less often. It's all good though because when we do open a bottle, we know it's a good one.

Sequoia Grove 2009 Cab is super smooth, not a ton of tannins going on in this one. Oaky smell, a hint of berry at the beginning, finishing with an awesome pine-i-ness of the sequoias that they stick in the wine barrel. Kidding I made that up. It's just good and I have tainted my mouth with fancy cheese so I can't give you a very good description.

wine: Justin Cabernet 2009

You know what's funny.  It wasn't until I took this picture of the empty wine bottle did I realize we had just drank the Justin Cabernet. Oddly enough, I ordered 3 bottles of Justin Syrah from our local wine store and brought them home, took one over to a friend's house (it was fantastic, that one really was a Syrah) and then Mike and I opened this bottle over the weekend figuring that we had to share the first bottle of Syrah with others, we were going to keep this one for ourselves.  (Sometimes, we aren't good at sharing.)  So, you can only assume that if I couldn't differentiate between a Cab and a Syrah, that I probably didn't take any notes on this bottle of wine. 

You are correct.  

I did notice the nice oak-i-ness that we like. Which, I just looked up on wine.com to see that, sure enough, this bottle is aged in American Oak.  We like wines that are aged in American Oak, if not for the entire aging process, then at least for a large portion of it.  American Oak is much more Oak-y than French Oak.  We, Americans, really now how to do Oak.  Well, I guess the Oak trees really know how to do oak (must be something special in American soil for Oak trees - how did I not learn anything about that in my Soil Science degree?) 

This bottle is quite good. I would definitely recommend it (I would also recommend the bottle that I thought we were drinking the Justin Syrah, that's also very good, and I'm not much of a syrah drinker).  It takes a lot for me to branch out of the Napa/Sonoma area and try a different California region, so this means a lot, people. 

PS - I just checked our wine frig.  The 3rd bottle of Justin is a Syrah. So I promise, I'll drink and share with you.  Well, I won't share the wine, you all live too far away.

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!

wine: Beringer 2006 St. Helena Cabernet Sauvignon

This bottle of wine has been sitting in our wine frig for a few years.  We've been giving it a quarter turn every month as we do with all of our wine just dying for the "special" day that we can open this and enjoy it.  We've passed up on other occasions like "We just got a puppy" day or "It's a Tuesday!" or "Mike just got into an MBA program!"  None of those seemed quite right for that special day to enjoy this bottle.  When, oh, when would we finally open this?!?

[ENTER] Our 5th Wedding Anniversary! Yahoo! A perfect opportunity to open this bottle.  We brought this bottle with us to the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay, where we were staying for our anniversary.  We enjoyed it in the Ritz Carlton's wine glasses, which were a bit smaller than normal wine glass size.  Can I just tell you that the wine glasses were a bit smaller than normal size Cabernet glasses so it was like we got to enjoy this bottle for twice as long.  Score! I am pretty sure that if could taste heaven, heaven would taste like 2006 Beringer Single Vineyard St. Helena Cabernet Sauvignon.  It was delicious.  So smooth, so good, and yet again, I did not take any specific notes, so you are just going to have to believe me that heaven-in-wine-form tastes delightful.  

The end.

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.)

wine: st. supery cab 2006

St. Supery is one of those wineries that we have always wanted to go to while in Napa and have never been.  Mike has had a few of their bottles of wine while entertaining his clients and so he was super excited that it was part of the 5 cent sale.  Upon first pour, the smell was delightful, and the taste was rich with espresso and cherry flavors.  Our only complaint was that the taste fell off so quickly.  Some people like that, especially when having a glass of wine with a meal.  We, on the other hand, like to have our wine kick us in the face, apparently. 

Stars: 2.79

Smell: great!

Color: strawberry jam

Taste: mellow, doesn't match the great smell

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.

wine: Ferrari-Carano

Of all my 2011 resolutions, my tip top most important resolution should be:

AnnE, when you drink a bottle of wine...write down what it tastes like! That way when a few weeks pass and a few different bottles have all been put in the recycling bin (well, we drink them before we recycle them, of course!), you can actually remember what a specific bottle tastes like!

I promise from now on, I'm sticking to that resolution.  Really.  I will.  I haven't exactly kept any of the other resolutions I set for myself, so this is the least I can do.  I do it for you. Really I do.

Since I can't for the life of me remember anything about this bottle, other than the fact that it was OK, not great, but drinkable. To be honest, it was a bit of a let down because their winery is absolutely fantastic.   We picked this one out because we really like their winery, however it's always been one of those winery stops that we go to after we're kinda ready for lunch and don't need to try another wine.  They have chickens wandering the premises.

CHICKENS!

How fun is that!?!

And if the roaming chickens aren't cool enough, the landscaping and scenery can't be beat.  I can't for the life of me find the pictures I have taken during our visits to Ferrari-Carano, I've included a picture below from their website.   Be sure to check out their website, they have so many beautiful pictures and they practice sustainable farming! Hello! I totally dig sustainable farming AND I love wine! This is truly a winery after my own heart.

Thank you to the Ferrari-Carano website for the picture...learn more about the winery and view more pictures  here.

wine: Stag's Leap Fay

You know what's really great about a great bottle of wine?  It tastes so very good. You know what the bad part about a really great bottle of wine is?  It makes your $5 bottle of wine taste like grape juice.

Oh well, a great bottle of wine is totally worth it.  This one is no exception.  We got this bottle when we were at the winery (which you may remember since I just told you about it.) We came home from a day in Napa with a few really good bottles of wine. 

Really good bottles.

The Stag's Leap FAY is one of our favorite wines ever. I think it might be Mike's #1 wine.  Which is saying something because he's got good taste. (He married me for goodness sakes! HA!) No seriously, the top of his list is typically Silver Oak and Joseph Phelps.  Sorry to tell you Mr. Phelps but you will not be receiving the top honors this season.  I'm also sorry to inform you however that I can't for the life of me think about any descriptive words that explain the FAY, other than:

YUM.