I had left the house earlier than normal to go to the wine tasting and I snagged the last chair at the bar. It was another evening there of a social media social night and was the placed packed. One other gentleman came in after I did, who is semi-associated with the wine shop and a fellow blogger and I asked him if we should go and commandeer a table from one of the adjoining restaurants and he declined. It was another busy night at D. Vine Fine Wines in Livonia.

The first of the two blended red wines were the Gundlach Bundschu Mountain Cuvee 2013, one of the oldest family continuous owned and operating wineries in California, if not the country, since they were established in 1858. Their vineyard is the Rhinefarm, and from that name and the winery’s name you can figure out where they emigrated from. The claim is that for a sobriety check the Sonoma County police ask the driver to read aloud “Gundlach Bundschu Gewurztraminer” and if they can, they can continue on. The Rhinefarm is located up in the Maycamas Mountain Range which separates Sonoma and Napa. This wine is a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec and Petit Verdot and aged for fourteen months in mostly French oak. I have had this wine several times over the years and it is a good safe bet.

The second red blend made me think of math lessons in high school, as “apriori” is a term meaning “from the beginning” or a fancy way of saying deductive reasoning. The Apriori Proprietary Red 2014 was from fruit all harvested from Napa Valley. Their proprietary blend is a mixture of Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petite Sirah. The wine was fermented for thirty days in Stainless Steel and then aged for eleven months in neutral French Oak. There were 2,565 cases made of this wine which is not a large number for a Napa winery. All in all, the two blended wines I thought would be excellent with a dinner.