New Year’s Eve 2018

Posted on January 10, 2019 by thewineraconteur

I really enjoy going out to eat and drink and if there is a chance to dance that is a real bonus.  How can a man not want to be out with his lady in all of their finery enjoying a night out on the town?  I am sorry, but there are a few nights that I just avoid going out and New Year’s Eve is one of those nights.  I find that the menu selection has been reduced to make the kitchen staff more productive and efficient and we go out often enough that normally what is exciting to others, just doesn’t do it for me anymore.   I am also leery of establishments that have a one price beverage charge included into a package for the night.  I find that there are some out there, especially the young, who have not honed their social and drinking skills, who think that they have to drink double what they think they must drink for the night.  I am sorry, but I do not suffer well the inebriated or the accidents waiting to happen.

We have been having a New Year’s Eve party at the house and it has become a night out for the family.  Some of the teenagers and the early twenties we lose for a couple of years, because they think that they have to go carousing.  We eventually get them back, especially after they pay the extra high prices for a night out on the town.  Also, just call me an old romantic, but how romantic is it, if at the stroke of midnight, they are taking photos and texting social media, instead of kissing their date?  All I know is that we put out a hell of a spread.   We have fruit and vegetables, pates and spreads, cheese and crackers, and this year we even found a wonderful raclette with truffles to add some extra interest.  Shrimp cocktails in the unlimited count containers I think are always a nice touch too.  Salmon, steaks and chicken appease all the protein choices, and if that selection doesn’t work, then maybe they need to go out and the following year, our menu won’t be so bad.  Then we clear it all away and bring out the sweets, and then some sit back and watch television, while others play board games designed for crowds with potentially lewd and boisterous answers, and to be truthful I can do without on both of those, but the majority rules.

Beverages flowed from the late afternoon onto the magic hour, and we always have some sparkling juice and ciders for the younger set, so that they can join in for the celebration.  I will only discuss two of the wines of the twelve or more bottles that seemed to evaporate that evening.  The celebrity of the evening that was opened up early to allow to breathe, got some extra breathing time as the cork crumble, which can be frightening, but the bottle was decanted and it was perfect.  We celebrated with Colgin Cellars IX Estate Napa Valley Red Wine 2005.   Ann Colgin founded this winery in 1992 and it has become one of the legendary “cult” wines of the valley.  The winery has three different vineyards and this comes from the Nine Estate is a twenty-acre vineyard on a broad slope of the St. Helena hill.   The IX estate red wine is a Bordeaux blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.  Every wine is aged in new French Oak barrels from the Cognac region.  The wine was just perfect and totally balanced and if there was a fault to be had, it was that this was the last bottle.  The second wine that will be mentioned was Far Niente Estate Bottled Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 1998 and if it hadn’t followed the Colgin, it would have been stellar, but it was still excellent and it was decanted as well before serving.  This is a legendary estate that was founded in 1885 by a relative of the famous American painter Winslow Homer, who may have even produced the artwork for some of the early labels.  Of course, this is another winery that became abandoned because of the Prohibition and was reclaimed and rebuild by Gil Nickel in 1979 of Nickel & Nickel fame.  Originally, they only made a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Chardonnay, though ten years later they also issued a dessert wine.  Here we were enjoying a wine that if similar to later offerings may have about three percent Petit Verdot and aged for about seventeen months in French Oak.  I found it curious that Oakville where Far Niente is based is one of the core sub-regions of Napa Valley and was granted an AVA in 1983, here was a wine in 1998 that was still using Napa Valley as a selling point.  This was really a charming wine, also with no faults, other than it followed the Colgin which was a bigger wine and almost three percent higher in proof.  A charming night with some great wines and not too often that we have two power-houses back to back.

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Pins and Skins and Whatever Else

Posted on January 8, 2019 by thewineraconteur

Some families are big, and some families are BIG.  There are five girls in my Bride’s family and then add husbands, children and grandchildren and then the numbers grow exponentially.  On top of that add just first cousins and their families and one almost feels like you need a convention center to handle the crowds.  The last several years, there has been a concerted effort to get as many together during the Christmas week, and I believe that my Bride is always one of the ringleaders.  Over the years they have tried a couple of venues, and one was very good, but the family had to be separated due to logistics of the rooms and it was kind of expensive.  Several places were bandied about and they finally settled on a place, that only required small minimums of charges and food, and they also allowed food, but not drinks, to be brought in.

This new place during the summer offers baseball diamonds, if you choose a time that doesn’t have a league going, and the same is for bowling, though I have to admit that it is the smallest bowling alley facility since my days growing up in a Detroit neighborhood, because most centers that I see now are huge.  They also had “wally ball” a variation of hand ball and unfortunately, we had one member from my generation discover that we cannot compete with the youngsters; our minds might think we are still young, but our bodies tell us a different message.  There was also a game called Pins and Skins, a game that I had heard about, but I did not know that it actually had a name.  The origin of this game as best as I have learned arose from tailgating parties and the State of Michigan is quite infamous for the extent that some tailgating parties go, to the point that some attend the party, but forgo the actual game.  Pins and Skins, if you are like me, needs a little introduction, in that the game is rather simple and a minimum of equipment.  One needs two complete sets of bowling pins (matching sets might be a bonus) and one football.  Two teams face off across the field (room here) and throw the football at the opposing teams bowling pins in the attempt of knocking them all down, then the other team takes the football and aims at the other set of pins.  While this was going on, in a big room the actual party was going on, and the facility started bring pizzas to the room, as I guess they had a formula of how many slices per person, and they also kept bringing pitchers of assorted soft drinks.  The balance of the food was the traditional potluck style of banqueting.  I do know that there was some coordination, so that no one dish would monopolize the selections.

The adult beverages had to be furnished by the establishment, so hence the per person charge for the evening was low, it could get expensive at the bar end of the affair.  The bar had a good selection of liquors for mixed drinks and quite a large selection of beers, both the commercial bulk types and the new craft beers that are the darlings of the drinking set these days.  I also would venture to say that between baseball, bowling and a couple other physical sports, beer would be the beverage of choice.  I might have even chosen a beer for myself, but then I would have deprived myself of an evening where the wine was selected as a convenience for the center.  I was going to buy a couple of bottles of wine from the bar to put out on the tables, but all the wine came in the handy dandy miniature bottles that one encounters on an airplane and a wine glass that when filled to the top contains the contents of the bottle.  My Bride and I were going to have Sutter Home California Chardonnay NV for the evening.  We have had the wine before, and on some business trips she actually takes bottles of this wine and gets a takeout meal for her hotel room, rather than having dinner in a restaurant by herself.  The Sutter Home Estate is located in St. Helena, one of the famed cities in Napa Valley, the estate was actually a winery in the 1870’s and continued until the government in their infinite wisdom decided to make decisions for the citizens and we had the great tragic experiment known as Prohibition.  After Prohibition the estate was just basically abandoned until 1948 when the Trinchero family purchased it and began a winery again.  In 1972, the family was experimenting with a Zinfandel wine that ended up white and dry and they called it “White Zinfandel, “and they produced 220 cases.  In 1975, the 1974 production had a problem and it had residual sugar and slight pink cast, and history was created.  The wine was getting popular and was at production of 25,000 cases and eventually this one wine grew to a count of 4.5 million cases.  This was nothing to sneeze at, and while the Chardonnay is probably not produced in that large of numbers, it is a bulk wine that pleases plenty of people.  In fact, in 1994 Wine Spectator gave Bob Trinchero a distinguished service award for “having introduced more Americans to wine on the table than anyone in history.”  I actually remember that issue, and at first, I was shocked, but then I agreed that any wine that is used as an introduction is great, and I have had worst wines over the years.  It is just fun learning some new things that I did not know, but then I also realize that Sutter Home Winery has allowed the Trinchero Family to expand and produce wines at the other end of the spectrum, so all is good.  I also know that the group enjoyed this outing so much, that my Bride actually paid for the rental of the room for next year.

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Corporate Christmas 2018

Posted on January 6, 2019 by thewineraconteur

For years I was part of Small Business and every year at Christmas time some of the employees would lament that we didn’t have a party.  My boss who was the head of the corporation always use to say that it would be cheaper to throw a party, but he felt that a Christmas Bonus was a better incentive to keep his employees.  Over the years I learned how smart and intelligent he was, because the only way a corporate party would compete is if he flew my Bride and I to Paris and we had dinner at a different Michelin Five Star restaurant each night for a week, and a spacious suite over-looking the Eiffel Tower.  In today’s real world, most companies don’t give bonuses or parties and God forbid if they called it a Christmas party.  I have also talked to some people that have attended the parties that their company had thrown and each person was given one drink ticket and then they were on their own, and that is understandable, because some people could try to show how much they can drink when someone else is paying for it.  I bring all of this up, because we attended an employee party, and this was the first time that spouses were invited.  Trust me, my Bride and I were not interested in over-indulging, in fact, my Bride’s whole focus was going to be the dance music after dinner.

The company had sent out many memos about the evening, including the suggestion that the men dress for the party.  One could see a clear demarcation line of the generations employed by the cut of the clothes.  There was also a memo that was sent out for everyone to select a dinner entrée and there was a choice of three: “Airline chicken” which I have discovered at an earlier event is a chicken breast and a wing, Salmon with pineapple salsa and wild-mushroom ravioli.  I was cautious and went with the chicken and my Bride went with the salmon.  For a good hour or two prior to dinner there were servers at the event with an assortment of hot and cold appetizers, and they were popular with the crowd.  The salad before dinner was a version of what is known as a “Michigan” salad with a Champagne vinaigrette.   After dinner there was a very nice sweet table set up.

I thought that the company did a very nice job, as there was a large bar set up in the room, with an assortment of beers, a fine selection of liquors and they had a choice of three different wines.  We actually tried two of the three wines during the course of the party and they were workmanlike and not the typical catering wine selections.  We started off with some glasses of white wine that paired decently with most of the appetizers.  We were drinking Guenoc California Chardonnay 2017 which is part of the Langtry Estate & Vineyards, which is part of the much larger Foley Family Wines.  I was intrigued to discover that Langtry Estate is actually the thirty-five square mile get-away for the famed actress Lillian Langtry, but this wine was not from their vineyards and probably is a money maker for the winery for their more craft-like wines.  It was a good basic Chardonnay, so we were happy.  We then switched over to Donati Family Vineyards Claret 2014 a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec and Petit Verdot and from the Paicines AVA, which was new to me; actually, the more I write about wines the more new things I discover.  Paicines AVA is the southernmost region of San Benito County in the Central Coast.  It was actually known and used for the growing of bulk wines and extensively used by Almaden until they were sold and split up, and now there are some winemakers that are doing their own thing.  The red wines produced by the Donati Family Vineyards are aged for twelve to eighteen months in a mix of California and French Oak barrels.  This was a very easy to drink Claret and we stuck with it, through our time on the dance floor and judiciously leaving before the affair was officially closing for the night.

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Christmas Day 2018

Posted on January 4, 2019 by thewineraconteur

Christmas Day is always hectic, or at least it was to us.  After my Bride came back from assisting in the rites at her church for the morning mass, she came home and we exchanged the Christmas presents.  The next thing I knew we were packing up the car to take more presents and other stuff for a trip to her Mother’s for the Traditional Christmas Brunch of pancakes, scrambled eggs with spinach, doughnuts, bacon and fresh kielbasa.  The only thing that may have been updated to this breakfast was perhaps Mimosas and I think that was snuck in years ago, probably by my Bride, and years before she ever met me.

After the Traditional Christmas Brunch, we packed up and drove home to partially prepare an entree of Bourbon Salmon and take that to my cousin’s home as she was making dinner.  I think my cousin must have cornered the market on two Armenian delicacies for appetizers, because they were coming out of the ovens continuously for an hour or so.  There was Cheese Beoreg, an extremely flaky puff pastry stuffed with white cheese and there was Lahmajoon which if you can imagine small five-inch diameter light dough “pizzas” covered with a paste of ground lamb, tomatoes, onions, garlic and parsley followed by a generous dusting of cracked red pepper seeds; I could have made my entire dinner on those two dishes.  The dinner’s star attraction was this incredible tenderloin cooked perfectly and could feed the army of guests, along with Armenian Pilaf, “Hot Ham” which is a time honored and revered dish that has to be there, and some of the finished roasted peppers one could ever encounter, the aforementioned salmon, spaghetti with clams, salads, vegetables and the list still goes on.  Then later on, after all of that is cleared away, enough desserts to rival a sweet table at a wedding.

Of course, before and after dinner, most of the men gathered in an alcove in the family room to have some libations.  The two most popular beverages were beer and Scotch, but fear not there was plenty of wine as well, and I will only mention two of the many bottles that were there.  We started with Peter Michael Winery “L’ Après-Midi” 2013 from the Knights Valley AVA.  Here was a charming white wine that was basically Sauvignon Blanc with eight percent Semillon and these grapes were grown alongside the famed “Les Pavots” vineyard for their Bordeaux blend wine.  The juices were aged on the lees for eight months in French Oak and then blended together for a very fruit forward finished wine with the fable terroir that has made Knights Valley so popular and singular in Sonoma County.  The other was a wine that I brought as a special treat for the tenderloin that I wanted to share with the wine drinkers.  I opened up a bottle of Yao Ming Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 2014 Yao Ming had retired from a career in basketball in July 2011, he began a new career as a winemaker in November 2011, barely enough time to realize that he had retired. Yao Family Wines owns no vineyards in Napa Valley, but they do have a tasting room in St. Helena, with contracts with vineyards in Coombsville, Atlas Peak, Oak Knoll District and St. Helena, but the wines carry the Napa Valley AVA. The Yao Ming Cabernet Sauvignon 2014 was the perfect wine to end the evening with. The wine was almost entirely Cabernet Sauvignon, but there was 5% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc and 2% Petit Verdot, and of the Cabernet Sauvignon there were three different clones and each was vinified separately before the blending. Here was a wine that was aged for eighteen months in French Oak, of which 65% was new, and they had created a wonderful drinking wine even with a high 14.3 Proof, and I knew that this would be the last of the case that I would open up as I think it will require about ten years and then this wine would be wonderful and by then I am not sure how much of this vintage will still be around.  There were twenty-eight-thousand cases produced of this wine and I think that I heard that it was sold out at the winery, and I do believe I may have gotten one of the last cases of the wine in Michigan.  As I like to say “even a blind squirrel finds an acorn occasionally.”

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Happy New Year 2019

Posted on January 2, 2019 by thewineraconteur

My Bride and I wish everyone a bountiful and fruitful coming year with plenty of love, luck, health and happiness.

“Why do I drink Champagne for breakfast? Doesn’t everyone?” Noel Coward

 

“Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right.” Mark Twain

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Christmas Eve 2018

Posted on December 31, 2018 by thewineraconteur

It really felt odd this Christmas season, as we were not doing our normal hosting duties.  One of my Bride’s sisters wanted to hold the dinner at their house.  Which was a nice change of pace, though my Bride did seem just as hectic with all of her preparations.  My Bride was also like a military general plotting out the events for the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, so she was always having her brain go in a million directions.   I just kind of stay out of the way and let her do her thing.

There was plenty of food being prepared when we got there early, so that my Bride could assist.  One of the dishes that they were preparing that was new was a turkey done in a hot-air non-grease fryer which actually greeted us on the front porch, when we arrived, as I thought it was one of the deep-fryers that you see on Social Media that ignite and causes major fires.  It gave the turkey a different flavor, which was fine, but I guess I am just used to the classic stuffed and roasted bird.  There was also Prime Rib being prepared, so the house was very fragrant with great aromas.  There were all sorts of appetizers and side dishes and desserts that were brought in by some of the other attendees.  My Bride brought a big pot of Armenian Pilaf and a big pot of her Brussel Sprouts done with Bacon and drizzled with Aged Balsamic.  There was plenty to eat, in fact there was an over abundance and most left with doggie bags of food.

While there was plenty to eat, there was also plenty to drink.  We brought several bottles of wine that are my Bride’s favorites, but I can’t keep writing about the same wines, even as good as they are.  I brought a special bottle that I wanted to see how it was doing and it has been one of our favorite wineries since our first trip to California to taste wines.  The wine was St. Supery Merlot Napa Valley 2001 and this wine was still one of their main offering, before they really got into the single vineyard wines.  St. Supery was one of the first wineries that we visited and they are located in Rutherford where they have an estate and they also own another much larger estate in Napa Valley as well.  The original proprietor Robert Skalli came to Napa Valley from Corsica, where his grandparents founded the winery Terra Vecchi. In 1982, he purchased the Dollarhide estate, a 1500-acre cattle ranch in the northeast corner of Napa Valley. He also purchased 56 acres in Rutherford, where the winery was built and still stands today. The first vintage of wine was produced in 1989 and the wines began to gain acclaim.  The Skalli family sold the winery to the large fashion corporation Chanel in 2015, which makes me wonder if my “Lifetime Pass” will still be honored.  I am glad to report to all the Merlot fans, that this wine was far from being over the hill, it was very mellow and drank like a Grand Cru, so no complaints from my Bride or myself or anyone else that tried the wine.

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An Older and a Younger

Posted on December 29, 2018 by thewineraconteur

There we were, The Wine Raconteur Senior and Junior getting ready to sit down for dinner.  We had just finished having appetizers and now on to the main event.  It was even better because we had our Brides with us, as well as the family of the Junior.  The two of us go back quite a few years and always with great memories.  Let us just say that there is some twenty plus years that divide us apart.

For our Christmas dinner, my Bride had made her Bourbon Marinade Salmon, the dish that she is making quite often these days and to be quite honest, people have even started requesting it.  She also made Armenian Pilaf and Green Beans.  She finished off the meal with a Tiramisu cake.  It was not a real elaborate meal, but a good satisfying meal, that she had decided on, that would even keep the children happy and it did, as we were told that the daughter of The Wine Raconteur Junior has become quite the maven on Salmon, and my Bride passed the test.

The varietal of choice with Salmon for us is Pinot Noir, and I am sure that some may shake their head and think that I have totally lost it, putting a red wine with fish, but I really like the combination.  I find that the oily texture of Salmon especially depending on the marinade really harmonizes with a Pinot Noir.  All I had to do was go and pick out a wine from the cellar.   I found a nice older bottle of Talbott Pinot Noir 2007 from Monterey County.  I have a certain fondness for Talbott wines, just like I have a certain fondness for his parent’s neckwear line Robert Talbott.  This is the beauty of having a cellar, because the odds are that this wine would have been gone with a smaller collection of wines, but it was allowed to age and it really mellowed out.  I let it breathe for about an hour before dinner, and when I poured it, the color was still quite dark with no signs of softening or browning.  The nose, while not the strongest Pinot I have had, let me know that it was a Pinot.  The taste was so mellow and silky that I am not sure if I could have deduced that it was from Monterey County and I have had plenty from there over the years.  Of course, the dinner was still going strong, but the Talbott had evaporated, so I went and found a younger Pinot Noir for a comparison, and it was stellar in its contrast.  The Fort Ross Symposium Pinot Noir 2013 took over the balance of the dinner.  Fort Ross Winery used the fruit from the Fort Ross Vineyard and the wine is from the Fort Ross-Seaview the only sub-region from the Sonoma Coast AVA.  This youngster came out like gang-busters, but it sounds odd, but it was elegant and sophisticated even for its youth.  The fruit was very much evident, but not in a brassy-showy way.  I think both wines were equal in their star appeal, but definitely not clones of each other.  There was plenty of conversation about how each of the wines showed their style.  So once again, we can see that older and younger can be harmonious side by side and at the same table, in more ways than one.

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What a Difference

Posted on December 27, 2018 by thewineraconteur

Sometimes you don’t think about the difference between a craft wine and a commercial wine until they are side by side.  We were all excited to have another dinner with an old friend of mine, and now ours, The Wine Raconteur Jr. and his family.  His was one of the first dates that we had to hammer down, because his schedule is the most precarious, because of his work.  Since last year they hosted, it was time for us to host again, and the major concern was how were we to keep their children occupied after dinner, as we were pretty confident that we could keep the parents busy.

We started off the evening in the living room, and yes, we are one of those old timers that actually use our living room, and it is not a museum piece that you walk by to get to another room.  We had munchies and appetizers arranged to nosh on, prior to the dinner.  Appetizers can always be a hit or a miss, especially when you factor in children, but their children are perfect miniature adults with an attention span and that is so refreshing.    The fresh shrimp with a cocktail sauce is always a safe bet.  The other safe bet, or so I thought was baked Brie with almond slivers, and that was kind of OK, the almonds weren’t the hit we thought they would be.

It was the wines during this course that really surprised me, as we have had the wines before, but not side by side and they were both wonderful.  We started off with Podere Ciona “Ciona Rosé” Toscana IGT 2016.  Franca and Franco Gatteschi were looking for a place in the countryside to retire to and found this one-hundred-acre estate with a house from the 18’th Century that had been abandoned for about forty years.  They purchased the property in 1990 and spent three years working on the main house.  They also started planning a winery and in 1997 they had their first official vintage.  They are located in the commune of Gaiole in Chianti Classico country.  They had been making a Rosé for a couple of years using Sangiovese, the grape of Chianti and Cabernet Franc, unfortunately one year the local wild boars decimated the Cabernet Franc vines, so this particular vintage is made from pure Sangiovese, and was aged for three months in Stainless Steel.  The entire production of this wine was a hundred cases of wine, and my local wine shop got the monopoly on the allotment of the United States quota.  The wine had a nice dark salmon pink color, with a nose of fruit and herbs, with tastes of strawberry, and watermelon.  It was a very easy drinking wine which just flowed along with the conversation.  We ran out of this wine, but there was another rosé wine in the refrigerator that has become kind of a go-to for us from the Wagner Family of Wines.  We opened up a bottle of Meiomi Rosé 2017 that was predominately Pinot Noir.  The wine carries a California designation as the fruit came from Monterey, Sonoma and Santa Barbara Counties.  It was cold fermented and aged in Stainless Steel.  It had a pretty color and was very easy to drink.  Now getting past the fact that the two wines were made from different grapes all together, the Podere Ciona was night and day superior on all counts and there was really no price differential between the two wines, but the craftmanship and texture was just amazing.  As a side note, afterwards we had to go back and get some more of the Podere Ciona for the house.

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Our Christmas Wish to You

Posted on December 25, 2018 by thewineraconteur

We just want to make sure that we get a chance to wish everyone a Happy and Merry Christmas full of love, luck, health and happiness.  I will let you in on a little secret, a Raconteur is never out of stories to relate.

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It is Time to Hide

Posted on December 23, 2018 by thewineraconteur

“A man’s home is his castle” is an idiom that is bandied about and some claim that it derives from Cicero and others from Blackstone.  I found an evening where valor was the knowledge of not trying to demand that concept and hiding in an eyrie.  All I know is that it was the annual Ladies Christmas Party that my Bride has been hosting since before I ever appeared on the horizon.  While some may question why I avoid this scene, instead of trying to be a co-host, I will say that it is better to be invisible.  For years, I never had a problem, as I would be working and by the time I got home from retail, the party would already be coming to an end.  The party is always the following Friday after the Thanksgiving weekend, and Thanksgiving is our demarcation day to have all of the presents wrapped, bundled by family, the Christmas/Hanukah cards with newsletters mailed and all parcels going out of state.  In the old days when I would arrive home, it was basically a hello and goodnight greeting rolled into one, but now I am there prior to the madness, and I am there afterwards.

How my Bride coordinates it all, is beyond all imagination.  The evening begins with basically is a Ladies pot-luck, and for some odd reason women prefer noshes to meals, so think of a barrage of small plates of appetizers, entrees, sides and desserts that seems to make no sense, but in the end, there is a complete meal.  Some of the dishes are plates are to die for (can a man say that?), while others are pre-packaged from the “catering” section of a local grocery store.  My job after carrying most of the winter coats upstairs, is to hide.  Of course, as I am writing on my computer upstairs in the office, I can hear when the “dinner” has commenced and I wait as the crowds go through and then reseat themselves back in the living room, the dining room or in the breakfast nook.  Then I become a Ninja and hastily make a couple of plates of goodies to take back up to the office, before they begin the next phases of the evenings.  My Bride besides maintaining photo albums of each event, keeps logs of the gift exchange and the part that I really wish to hide from, the moment when each participant gets up and announces what they hope to accomplish in the following year, and of course someone (I wonder who that is?) can remind them what their aspirations were the year before.  One lady that had moved away for business and had just returned, thought she was safe, but her aspirations from the last time she had been here was duly noted from that year’s log.  Did I mention that the Ninja actually makes a couple of sweeping attacks to the kitchen, I mean who wants to see Shrimp Cocktail, spectacular Deviled Eggs and fried chicken go to waste, and I mean this is about the only time for a year that I get to eat fried chicken?

In the library, just off the foyer opposite the living room, we set up a table near the Christmas tree with adult libations.  There is an assortment of different liquors and liqueurs that are the current trendy items for those that want a cocktail or two.  Then there is the collection of wines, which include my Bride’s assortment of go-to Chardonnay wines that I probably write about too often, because she is a creature of habit; I mean she still drinks the same Scotch since I have met her, even with me buying her an extravagant blended Scotch that she doesn’t like as much as her blend.   Then there are a couple of treacly sweet wines that are necessary in today’s society that I try to refrain from writing about, because I might become more of a social pariah than I already am with my writings.  I put out a bottle of red wine, even though most of the time, I hear that the wines are too dry.  I put out a bottle from the Columbia Valley in Washington state, and one of the largest AVA areas in the country, as it basically has all the smaller AVA districts within its huge district.  The MERF Cabernet Sauvignon 2018 is from the hands of David (MERF) Merfeld who grew up on a family owned farm in Greene, Iowa.  David ended up moving to Seattle and was employed by a construction inspection company and started brewing beer as a hobby.  In 1996 he quit his day job and went into brewing full time while attending beer school and in 1997 was hired at Bert Grant’s Ales as a brewer, which was owned at that time by Ste. Michelle Wine Estates.  It didn’t take long before he was working for Ste. Michelle as a winemaker.  He now makes his own wines which are cellared and bottled at MERF Wines in Paterson, Washington.  This particular wine is eighty percent Cabernet Sauvignon, nineteen percent Merlot and a whopping one percent of Cabernet Franc.  Seventy-five percent of the juice was aged for twelve months in a combination of French and American Oak, with the remainder aged in Stainless Steel for more of the fruit and when blended back together the wine is said to have character and complexity.  I was hoping to tell you more about the wine, but by the time I went down to have some after my fix of Chardonnay, the wine had evaporated.  I think this was a first for a red wine at the party.  There were also a couple of wines that were given to the hostess, and lo and behold, your Raconteur even received a present.  The guest that makes the magnificent deviled eggs (did I mention that there were deviled eggs) likes to shop garage sales for fun, and has found some spectacular things for our home and kitchen (her brother is a Master Chef) found me some wine bottle tags for the cellar, which are becoming scarce to find, so it was greatly appreciated.

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