My latest article for Palate Press features four different wines from around the country that support worthy charities, some don’t take profit at all.
The article has already been featured in the blog of the day section on winebusiness.com, read the full article here.
I definitely love a good Zinfandel, especially with a nice, saucy pizza. ( I learned that pairing from a wine maker friend in California) However, pizza was not what I had in mind when I picked up a bottle of this awesome Zin from Dry Creek Vineyard. Bill Smart had asked me to visit dry Creek Vineyard on my next trip to California, so I paid him a visit. After tasting through a number of their reds my heart was set on this one. A dry fruity zin with a nice balance of spice. That being said, I brought it home and had it with a parmesan, feta, and tomato pizza on wheat crust.
This 2005 zin is a nice ruby, almost amethyst in the glass, and is 14.9% alcohol by volume. On the nose there is heavy black cherry, less pronounced blackberry and a hint of nutmeg and cinnamon. On the palate once again black cherry holds the big gun and hits you first, followed by a mixture of blackberry, some spice on the back end, and a bit of acidity on the mid palate. It has a peppery, velvety finish which is nice for such a deep red. A friend commented how she enjoyed the finish the most because she is used to reds giving her “cotton mouth.”
I also enjoyed the rest of my glasses of this wine with the help of my new BFF: the winesoiree. I got to know the creator of the wine soiree via Twitter (which is where I meet all the best, and the worst people) and he sent me a coupon to pick myself up one of these. You see, I fell in love with it after I had a glass poured through one belonging to my friend Thea Dwelle (lusciouslushes.com) and was floored by the difference. I tried and reviewed a glass of the zin after simply letting it breathe for an hour, then tried it through the soiree. The difference truly is astounding. All of the subtle nuances of the wine came bursting to life; there were flavors and smells I hadn’t noticed before. Overall this is a great little gadget, and at $25 it’s well worth the money http://www.winesoiree.com
For Valentine’s Day this year I tried out my latest discovery. I recently met Cheryl Sher, owner of Sher Bliss wine and chocolate shop in Columbus, Ohio. She makes chocolates from a recipe that has been in her family for years, and also sells wine. It would only make sense to combine the two, right? Bliss in a Bottle is her creation: a bottle of wine dipped in chocolate! What could be better than pairing two of my favorite things? These bottles are so artfully done that you can still read the label. Mine is a sparkling Cabernet Sauvignon from Italy. It was dipped in dark chocolate and absolutely delicious! There are milk and white chocolate options as well. Cheryl says they are even beginning to add mint and raspberry to the chocolate so that it will better pair with the wine.
I had never tried a sparkling cab before and it was really interesting. This Altana Perlage Frizzante is organically grown and 11.5% alcohol It was dry and had all the characteristics of a regular cab: dark fruit, very rich, a hint of vanilla oak on the finish, and had just a hint of sweetness.
The bottle is covered in celophane so that the chocolate bits are caught there for you to enjoy instead of all over a counter top or floor. 
There are two strings underneath the chocolate that pop out above the bottle for easy cracking. ( I would have taken a video but I was sans makeup this particular evening; and I’m not out to frighten anyone) My friend Ryann and I had a nice dinner and followed up with this bottle for dessert. It was so pretty! And there was only one rule: we can’t leave anything in the bottle. Why would we? 
To find out more about Sher Bliss, or to visit the store front visit http://sherbliss.com
Artiste normally only makes blended wines, but this one is 100% mourvedre. According to winemaker Bion Rice “it was too good to blend!”It is a great medium bodied red. A nose of light rose petal and red fruit with a surprising butterscotch finish. The finish of the wine is what intrigued me most, it isn’t sweet by any means, and the flavor of butterscotch is undetectable on the nose but bursts on the palate at the finish. I immediately fell in love with this wine after trying it and took home a bottle to Ohio from California. This Mourvedre was a limited release wine club wine, but I loved it so that they let me purchase a couple of bottles. The wine is 14.4% alcohol and was a 74 case production.
Mourvedre is on the right.
What makes Artiste stand out from the rest is their labeling process. Artists from around California submit artwork and Rice chooses his favorites to reproduce on the bottles. Reprints are then sent to wine club members and some are available for purchase at one of their two tasting rooms in Healdsburg and Santa Ynez, California
I’m aware this post is a bit overdue, but better late than never right? First of all, the only wine I was planning on drinking this new year was the bottles of champagne that were to be popped in New York City where I was supposed to spend 4 days ringing in the New Year. As all perfect plans tend to do, my plans fell through, on the day I was supposed to leave. What’s a girl to do two days before NYE with no plans? Well, visit localwineevents.com of course. I found a few parties, but the one that stood out was a six course wine dinner coupled with hotel stay in Jeffersonville Indiana. Why Indiana? I thought the same thing until I saw that the Bristol Bar and Grille was home to a Master Sommelier named Scott Harper.
Master Sommelier, Scott Harper
Scott was very pleased to hear that I was a wine writer and was extremely knowledgeable and straight forward with the dinner guests. I only received a few questions from dinner patrons regarding the wine and I was very impressed. The dinner consisted of a nice mix of white a red wines including a couple of very sweet wines.Harper wanted to include wines from all the wine regions he has traveled to around the world, the wines he chose were expertly paired with very diverse courses created by Chef Richard Doreing. We sampled everything from jumbo shrimp corn dogs to petit beef wellington to a dessert of a chocolate flight complete with a Pouderoux truffle and chocolate mousse in an edible chocolate espresso cup.
the menu
My favorite pairing of the evening was tempura fried goat cheese with quince preserves coupled with a Gewurztraminer from Andrew Rich in Columbia Valley, Washington. This was our last wine poured as it needed to be chilled. It came in a small bottle which brought to mind an ice wine, and I was expecting the same flavor profile. I’m used to Ohio Gewurtztraminers, and I was pleased with the subtle differences in this particular Gewurtz. It’s bouquet was heavy on honey, and almost smelled thick like honey. The mouth feel of Rich’s creation was almost carbonated in the way it popped with my food, much lighter on the palate than I had expected, and not as much like an ice wine. Overall the wine was rich and sweet on the finish, the sweetness was offset by the goat cheese and preserves. A very impressive pairing. 
Thinking the Gewurtztraminer pairing could not be topped, I was even more surprised with Domaine Pouderoux from France’s Maury region. This wine, paired with dark chocolate creations was made from 100% grenache grapes on 100 year old vines. Looking at the wine list I was wary as to how this grenache would fare against chocolate. Once again I was surprised by the depth and flavors of the wine. It’s nose was heavy with dark chocolate, it reminded me of something I had tasted before but I still cannot put my finger on it. The richness of this wine rounded out our dinner pefectly. We finished up around 11:30 and went back to our suite to ring in the New Year with a bottle of bubbly. Gloria Ferrer, blanc de noirs, and you better believe I wore the same dress I had planned on wearing to the MTV New Year’s party.
A.B.S. dress and Steve Madden Stilettos
Here’s to many great wines in 2010!
If I elaborated on how much my life has changed in this past year I could write a book. Come to think of it, I have been toying with the idea of a memoir….Back to reality.
I just changed my Master’s concentration yesterday, which is why I felt the need for this post. Originally I was accepted into the Media Studies program focusing on children’s television education. I then branched that out to include public relations as I got more and more into wine. Yesterday I bumped into my adviser and we got to talking about how much I love the wine industry and everything I’m doing with it as far as The Second Glass, this blog, and one more surprise that I will get into soon. She suggested that I move my study over to Media and Cultural Studes, focusing on wine culture specifically. I am switching advisers to someone who knows a lot about wine, culture, history, and is a self professed foodie. I think my college experience is getting better by the day…
Looking back a year ago I had basically nothing to do with wine. I still drank it at parties and get togethers, but to think that I would crave shiraz a year later was unthinkable. I received my undergrad in Broadcast Journalism, all I had ever wanted to do was become a reporter; or at least that’s what I thought I had always wanted to do. By the end of my college career, I really wanted to explore other media options such as magazine writing and PR, but I had too many credits to change and too few prerequisites to make any difference.
I graduated, and couldn’t get a job for 5 months. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because in this time I discovered Twitter, The Second Glass and my new love of wine. I was forced to try red wines when a dear friend of mine began taking me to weekly lunches and exposing me to his 30+ years of wine knowledge and vintages. To say I didn’t appreciate it was an understatement; I could barely handle it at the time! That’s when I really fell head over heels. The more I decided to dive into the world of wine, the more I wanted to learn and the more I wanted to experience.
It’s funny to say, but wine has made me brave. Not brave in the hitting on men at a bar while drunk with wine sense, but brave in the trying new things sense. I was able to go to California for two weeks because I wanted to write an article about it, I can go into restaurants and realize the tastes of the people in that area from the wine list, I can go to a wine shop and know what I like and be willing to try new vintages and grapes. All of this came from me applying to get my Master’s. After being pretty lost in the sudden economic downturn and massive joblessness in the country, to know what I was going to be doing in a year gave me a lot of confidence to go out and live. Boy have I lived, and boy have things changed!
Now that I’ve done my 360 spin from newscaster to wino extroadinaire I’m ready for the next year. Once I finish my study I want to go to Egypt for a month, then visit Rome and Greece with my best friend. After that, you won’t be able to move me from Ohio to California fast enough. Let’s see what changes I have to make on that prediction a year from now…..
