Most of the times that we go out for dinner, we usually meet at a restaurant. One of the couples that came to our house for Thanksgiving invited us over to their house. This couple are old friends of my Bride and precede our time together. They ended up moving from the East side to the West side, which is rather unique in the Detroit area, most people just end up moving farther east or west and a few move north and some move Downriver; if you look at a map of Detroit, if one moves south they would be in Windsor, Ontario, Canada and that is the only point where Canada is south of the border.

So, we drove over to the other couple’s home which is only the next community over from us, and we met their neighbors, who had also been invited over for the dinner as well. As is customary, during some small talk, we found mutual associates and locations that we had in common. The other couple had brought a salad that started the meal off. The main entrée of the evening was a roasted pork tenderloin that was cooked perfectly and it was with a gravy and a couple of vegetables on the side. There was also dessert, which my Bride and I both passed on, as we were full, and normally we don’t have dessert.

Most of you won’t be surprised that we brought the wine for dinner, and not knowing the menu, I chose a white and a red wine. The white wine was Joullian Roger Rose Chardonnay 2014 from Joullian Vineyards Ltd. and the fruit came from the Roger Rose Vineyard in the Arroyo Seco AVA. The funny thing is that we had just received another wine from Joullian from our wine club “A Taste of Monterey.” We started off with this wine while having some appetizers and a chat in the living room. The fruit of this wine is actually from Dijon Chardonnay clones and since the vines are twenty to forty years old they survived the drought year of 2014. They have strived to maintain the concept of a Burgundy Chardonnay by using French Oak that has been cured for three years to minimize the oakiness that could occur. There were one-hundred-twenty-five cases made of this wine and it was delightful and it still had a lot of freshness to savor. The second bottle that I opened at the same time to let it breath was Pessagno Pinot Noir Four Boys Vineyard 2013, and I have had their Pessagno Chardonnay Sleepy Hollow Vineyard 2010. This wine comes from the Santa Lucia Highlands AVA and I cannot say enough about the Pinot Noir wines that I have enjoyed from this area. This wine was made from lightly crushed berries with about forty percent of the berries left whole for fermentation. They used both Burgundian yeast and native yeast cultures and they made this wine Sur Lees and stirred over an eleven-month period. There were one-hundred-fifty cases made of this wine and while it was a good Pinot Noir, I thought it was a little light for what I have come to expect from the Santa Lucia Highlands. All in all, a charming evening, even if my Bride thought that a certain Raconteur controlled the conversation, and perhaps she was right.