For years, I have written about the large family gatherings we would have for holidays and birthdays.  It gradually became that way, as my Bride, before we met, was the daughter that was always cooking with her mother for events, and my Bride was the first of the five daughters that bought a house, and she made sure that it was big enough to handle the crowds.  This went on for years, but now, the families are starting to splinter, because our nieces and nephews are getting married and the families are having smaller dinners with just their immediate family.  We ended up having five for dinner, but my Bride still persevered with traditions and she even got me an Easter basket, candies, cookies and all the stuff that disappeared from the house during Lent.  Though she really spoiled me and bought me a set of Laguiole Steak Knives, the ones with a bumblebee at the tang.  I have admired these from the first time we used them at Casanova’s in Carmel-by-the-Sea, and the following year, when we went there, they were using a different set of knives, because the knives had been stolen by patrons, how sad.  Yes, my Bride does spoil me.

We started off in the living room having appetizers, as I am still old-fashioned and like using our living room for family and friends.  She placed some Hummus with garlic, flat bread, crackers and some cheeses.  One of the cheeses, was a big hit, but the label from the shop didn’t reveal much, other than it was cow’s milk, had a hard red rind and it was a “lemon cheese” and no there wasn’t any leftover for me to indulge in, the next day.  We served Domaine Daulny Reserve Sancerre 2022 from the Loire.  Etienne Daulny owns fifteen hectares of vines divided into about fifty different plots within Sancerre and none of these wines see Malolactic fermentation.  Most of the aging occurs in Stainless Steel, but about twenty percent is aged in well used six-hundred-liter “puncheons” and then the wines are blended at the end.  A nice straw-colored wine that had notes of grapefruit, lemon and herbs.  On the palate, tones of a classic Sancerre, a bit racy, well balanced with a nice long crisp finish with terroir.

For the main course, my Bride made my (our) favorite Easter dinner, Roast Lamb with Root Vegetables.  This is really “comfort food” for me and I also enjoy the root vegetables roasted with the meat.  She also made for the first time some Southern Fried Chicken for our one grandson, that doesn’t like lamb.  My Bride doesn’t like fried food or even frying food, but for a grandson, she would even bend her rules.  It didn’t look picture perfect, but it was moist and tender and what more can you ask for; and the strange thing was, the grandson didn’t come for dinner as he was ill, and I was going to share with him a special wine, it will just have to wait, until the next dinner.  With Lent being over, my Bride made dessert especially for herself, but a true classic for the Detroit area.  She made Cream Puffs and served them with ice cream and Sanders Hot Fudge.  I gave my Bride a couple of choices for the wine for dinner and she chose Cain Vineyard & Winery Cain Five Napa Valley 1999, of course nowadays the wine carries the Spring Mountain District AVA, which was granted in 1993, but it was not as well-known as Napa Valley.  Since I first introduced my Bride to Cain Five, it is her first choice for any true celebration.  Cain began in 1980, when Jerry and Joyce Cain purchase the 550 acre McCormick Ranch (sheep) with the intention of making a big mountain “Napa Cabernet blend.”  The first vintage was released in 1985, and all was going great for them until they lost the winery, heritage barn, housing and the 2019 and 2020 wines by the “Glass Fire,” and they have rebuilt.  This wine is a blend of sixty-one percent Cabernet Sauvignon, nineteen percent Cabernet Franc, ten percent Merlot, six percent Petit Verdot and four percent Malbec; of the forty-four lots, twenty lots were selected for this wine. The fruit is hand-harvested, destemmed, whole berries, manual pressing, lot by lot, using indigenous yeast, with maceration going for ten days to five weeks for the lots.  The wine was aged for twenty-one months in French Oak including Malolactic Fermentation, with minimum fining and no filtration.  For a twenty-six-year-old, the wine was a deep black-ruby offering notes of blackberries, cedar, tobacco, sage and sous bois. On the palate after being open for over an hour, this full-bodied wine displayed rich tones of blackberry, spices, still very tight and silky tannins, well-balanced with a very long-count finish of fruit and terroir, we no signs of being old.