Well I was labeling and storing all the wine that my Bride had bought for the holidays and all of the dinners that she either prepared in the last weeks or so, or soon to be.  She likes to buy crowd pleasers.   While unpacking all the cases that she bought; I also found the carton that came from our wine club.

On one of our trips to Carmel by the Sea, we took a side trip to the city of Monterey, which is not a far drive at all.   We were going to have dinner at a famous restaurant, but that will be another story to come.  While in Monterey we were the obliging tourists and walked the shops and bought gifts, some major and some minor as is my Bride’s wont, though I have to admit I am probably to blame for any major purchase that upsets the piggy bank.

While we were wandering we came upon a shop called A Taste of Monterey, and a fine time we had there.  We did a tasting of the wines that they were featuring at the moment and discovered that they had a wine club, and even more important, they would ship to our state.  Some of the laws regarding wine shipments are crazy, as far as I am concerned.  Years earlier some of the wineries explained a loop-hole that I could use for my own purchases when I sent myself some sixteen cases of “olive oil.”  My one brother-in-law can have no wine shipped to his house, even wine that he has bought at auctions.

A Taste of Monterey at that time offered two different wine clubs.  One was two bottles of wine each month or a quarterly club offer of three wines at each delivery.  We thought about it, and even at that time we were not seeing a lot of wines here locally from the Monterey area, we figured the popular price wines would eventually start appearing here eventually.  We opted for the better package and we have not been disappointed.  I thought I would mention the new shipment that I just placed in the cellar, though we have not tried them.

The first wine is a Pinot Noir from the Lucienne Winery, the Lone Oak Vineyard with the Santa Lucia Highlands designation.  Through the years we have had other wines from this winery as well as from the Santa Lucia Highlands and have enjoyed all of them.  The Pinot Noir wines from this area have been wonderful, at least the better priced wines that we have had.

The second wine is a Syrah from the Wrath Estate Winery of Monterey, and they list the San Saba Vineyard as the source of this particular bottling.  We have also had wines from this winery in the past of different vintages and have also enjoyed them as well.

The third wine in this package is a blended red wine called Cheval Rouge Reserve from the Boete Winery and all of their fifteen acres in the Carmel Valley.  This wine is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot grapes.  I have had one other wine from this winery and it was excellent, and I am looking forward to trying this wine, perhaps sooner than later.

So here is my early report, and I look forward to telling you about the wines at a later date, with hopefully a good story to go with it.