I Am Impressed

Posted on December 22, 2017 by thewineraconteur

We went to have a Christmas dinner with The Wine Raconteur Jr and his family. He chose his own nom de plume when he wrote his first guest article for me years back. I have known this young man since I had a hand in hiring him when he was a student at the university back in the day and I have been impressed with his knowledge and maturity ever since. I have watched him over the years grow and observed qualities that have made him a well-rounded individual with many interests, and some of them intertwine with my own interests. My Bride has also taken him as family from the first time she met him and we have had the honor to attend his wedding and to watch his family grow and prosper.


We had dinner over at their house, and I think it was partially so that his children could keep themselves entertained with their stuff. We started off with some appetizers of a home-made tomato based dip with crackers and some Fontina cheese. It turned out that the dip was made with Eggplant and it was the first time since I was a child that I have eaten Eggplant and the dip was excellent, so I may have to rethink my stance on Eggplant. The entrée for the evening was Lasagna, another dish that I do not like, as most restaurants have always slopped on the Ricotta and the Mozzarella and made an unpalatable dish for me. Once again, I was totally impressed with the dish as it was not what I was expecting and perhaps it was a Sicilian version that I had not encountered before, but my man, The Wine Raconteur Jr and his charming Bride did an excellent job changing my viewpoint on two dishes that I have not had for maybe forty years. Afterwards we had a tart of pecans and cranberries and he did remember that my Bride and I are delicate and require decaffeinated coffee.


We brought the wine for dinner, even though I knew that he would have something special, but we could not let them cater the entire meal without some input from us. We started out with a bottle of Spanish Rosé from a new region for me, which was fine with the appetizers. The Bodegas Cesar Principe Clarete de Luna 2016 is a very pretty deep pink color in the bottle. I could not find much production notes for this wine, but I must presume that the skins were left after the pressing for a couple of days to get this deep color. The winery has been in production since 1982 in Cigales, which is just north of the Duero in Castilla y Leon and this wine had five thousand cases produced. The wine is eighty percent Tempranillo and then evenly split among Verdejo and Albillo. The wine had a good nose and a soft finish and I did not see any problems with it when paired with the tomato-based Eggplant dip. Our second wine, I might have changed, if I had known the entrée of choice, but it still worked out well, even though the dish was Sicilian and the wine was French. We had a bottle of Domaine Savoye Morgon Cote du Py 2005 which is from the Beaujolais region and is made from the Gamay grape. Morgon is one of the ten Cru du Beaujolais districts and Cote du Py is a Climat of Morgon. Cote du Py is considered the best in Morgon and is known for having excellent aging potential. The hill of Py is the highest point of Morgon and was once a volcano and hence the ground is basically basalt, which imparts a unique terroir to the wine. The wine had a nice color, good nose and a decent finish, and after pouring out half of the bottle among the glasses on the table, I realized that I should have decanted the bottle, but it was too late, after seeing the tell-tale sediment line from where the bottled had rested since it had been cellared, so we worked around it. There was enough richness in the wine that it worked quite well with the dish and it was not showing any signs of age. It was an excellent evening and we had a great time, and The Wine Raconteur Jr impressed me that he could make an old curmudgeon change his opinion not once, but twice that night.

Posted in Dining, Wine | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Doctor in the House

Posted on December 20, 2017 by thewineraconteur

We are busting the buttons off of our shirts and blouses, as my Bride’s God-daughter is now a PHD. I wrote earlier about how we went to observe her defense of her doctorate thesis and I said it was all Greek to me, but it made perfect sense to her and the people that understood it. We went to see her get her award and her “hooding.” The afternoon was full of pomp and circumstance from the moment they all entered the arena preceded by a marching bagpipe procession. The ceremony was for the Masters and Doctorate graduates. There were twelve of us there to witness the honor and we got there very early to block out our seats right in the front two rows.


There were even more that came out to celebrate afterwards at the newest location of Bigalora Cucina in Rochester. We have been to several of the Bigalora locations and the food is very good in a lively casual atmosphere. As the place settings state the fast terms of their secret success is “72 hours, 900 degrees, 90 seconds.” The pizza dough requires 72 hours before being used, the wood burning ovens are set at 900 degrees and the pizza bakes for 90 seconds; all to deliver the lightest pizza crust that you have ever had. As all of the guests arrived and before we went to where our party was going to be, we all sat in the bar area, munching on focaccia bread and fried Shishito peppers with sea salt. Afterwards we all sat down for family style servings of salad, endless supply of three different pizzas of Pepperoni, Margherita and Funghi. There were also platters of Rigatoni with both Marinara and Bolognese sauces. The meal was finished with Frittelle, fried Bigalora dough with house made chocolate hazelnut spread and a strawberry compote. There was also a large sheet cake with the proper salutations on it.


While we were in the bar the guest of honor tried one of the house wines. This house wine is not only featured at Bigalora Cucina, but also at Bacco Ristorante. The Baia Estate Rosé 2016 had a beautiful color and nose, but alas, I can find no information about it, other than it is being produced in the Leelanau County area of Michigan and made to Old World standards. My Bride and I started with some Spanish Coffees and then we got a bottle of wine. We had the Feudi di San Gregoria Greco di Tufo DOCG 2014. The Feudi di San Gregoria winery is a young winery established in 1986 in one of the oldest wine regions of Italy, namely Campagnia. Campagnia’s most famous white wine is Greco di Tufo, which as the name suggests is a clone of Greco Bianco brought over to Italy by the Greeks centuries ago, and there are only eight villages that are allowed to use this DOCG designation. The Tufo refers to the tough volcanic soil which imparts its terroir in the form of minerals that blend easily with the acidity of the grapes. By law this wine must be eighty-five percent Greco di Tufo, but the rest may be another old resident grape of the area Coda di Volpe Bianco. I think that it was fitting that the doctoral thesis and the wine varietal were both Greek to me, but we couldn’t be happier with our new Doctor.

Posted in Dining, Wine | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

An Invitation

Posted on December 18, 2017 by thewineraconteur

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.

Posted in Dining, Wine | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Some Reserve Wines

Posted on December 16, 2017 by thewineraconteur

I just opened up my new carton of wines from “A Taste of Monterey” which is my wine club that we have belonged to for years. We opted for the Private Reserve Club which delivers three bottles of wine four times a year. Our thoughts were that we would get smaller boutique type wines that would not make it to Michigan otherwise and so far, we have been correct. I also have to say that we have been pleased with the selections and this shipment will make us smile in the future as well.


The first bottle is from a new winery to me, Comanche Cellars is a small winery that produces under a thousand cases of wine, and it is named after the horse that Michael Simon had when he was ten years old, and Comanche’s horse shoes are on the label. The bottle of Comanche Cellars Chevera Vineyard Pinot Noir 2015 comes from the Arroyo Seco AVA, and the vineyard is owned by Frank Stanek who named the vineyard after his two granddaughters Charlotte and Eva and the vineyard is high above the Arroyo Seco valley. The brochure claims that it has strong nose and flavors, as well as muscular tannins. The aging potential for this wine is six to seven years. There were one-hundred-thirty-four cases produced and the label even gives the count of the bottle, as was bottle 566 of 1675.


The second bottle was from a winery that I have had before and I am looking forward to this bottle. Joullian Vineyards is in the Carmel Valley and they grow multiple clones of each varietal at different elevations and soils to add extra nuance to their wines. The Joullian Family Reserve Syrah 2014 is from a one-acre parcel of the “Estrella River” clone grown at the highest elevation of the vineyard. The wine was aged for thirteen months in Center of France thin-staved barrels and racked every three months, it was then bottled unrefined and unfiltered, so it will probably require decanting when it is opened. There were one-hundred-ninety-nine cases produced and the aging potential is seven to eight years.


The last bottle was also from a new winery that was established in 2015 by a band of artists, craftspeople, and lovers of life brought their wandering imaginations to a piece of land in Carmel, California. They named this location Folktale Winery and Vineyards. The Folktale Arroyo Seco Chardonnay 2015 has a whimsical label truthful to the image of the winery. The wine began in a vat and then was aged for six months in French Oak of which twenty percent was new. The wine is described as creamy with mineral notes drawing from the Le Mistral Vineyard on their estate. This wine has the largest production of the three wines that I received at just under a thousand cases, and the aging potential is claimed for five to six years, though I hardly ever have a Chardonnay that long in the house. There will be three more wines that I will look forward to having in the forthcoming years.

Posted in Wine | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hiding Out

Posted on December 14, 2017 by thewineraconteur

For some odd reason some people find me shy, while most would describe me as gregarious. The other night, I think the first would be a better fit. It was the first Friday night in December and tradition holds that my Bride was having her annual Lady’s Christmas Party. This little party has been going on since before we met, and even though she frets about all the minor little things, it always ends up being a nice party. They do all sorts of things like games, hopes and inspirations, group photos and a gift exchange. I am wise enough to realize that it is time for me to be a docile church mouse and hide in my office, until it is all over. Even though, I probably know everyone there, I just don’t fit in, and I can accept that feeling one night a year.


I hide in my office and kind of keep the door slightly closed, because we are not the best at filing and getting things put away, so that door is usually shut for any event at the house. I usually wait until I can hear that most of the guests have arrived, because that is my cue to go downstairs, say a group “hello” and fill up a couple of plates of food and go back into exile. The food part is my excursion into the unknown. All of the women bring a platter of food, a type of “pot-luck” affair, and even though I don’t like to generalize, women tend to like appetizers and finger-food, as opposed to stick on the ribs dishes. So, each year, I maneuver around salads and casseroles, foraging for enough to hold me, until the morning. I mean it would be in bad taste to order a delivered pizza. I normally can make a meal on a platter of shrimp cocktails, little meatballs, charcuterie and cheese, chicken wings and some of the best deviled eggs, year after year the winner, but it would be tacky to take the whole platter upstairs with me.


Man does live by bread alone, and I have to say that most women don’t either. The table that is set up in the library had multiple bottles of wine open, with adjacent wine glasses, and those little glass jewelry charms that one can put on the stem to identify the glass that you are using. When I am home, I tend to always use the same wine glass, and Lord knows that I am a creature of habit. I looked at the assortment of wines that were opened and there was a couple of popular sweet wines of Moscato and Riesling. There were also a couple that I recognize would be nice to write about, as they were not expensive, but different, and popular priced. The first wine that I tried was Josh Cellars Chardonnay 2016, a California Chardonnay from a winery that was founded in 2007 and a self-described negocient brand, as they have no vineyards. The fruit was harvested with a blend of Mendocino and Monterey county grapes. The winery was founded by Joseph Carr and named for his father who was a volunteer fireman, and the winery is dedicated to raising funds for assorted volunteer firefighter organizations. This wine is under the umbrella of the much larger Deutsch Family Wines and Spirits group. The wine was a good Chardonnay and very easy to drink, especially with the assortment of foods that I was nibbling on. The other wine that I tried and from the label art, was one that I had my doubts about, but I was game for trying. The Cherry Tart Pinot Noir 2012 was from Jason Woodbridge who also makes a single vineyard Pinot Noir called Cherry Pie Wines. He calls this wine a “multi-single vineyard blend.” The fruit came from single vineyards in Sonoma, Monterey and Santa Barbara counties and aged in French oak. While not stellar, it had a nice flavor from a very finicky grape and like I said, it was affordable and good for a crowd. I was able to hide most of the night, until I was summoned to take a group photo, and all the woman crowded around the dining room table and I took a couple of shots, to make sure that my Bride could find one that she approved of, since the very next morning she took all of the photos and had them developed so that she could make another page for her photo album devoted to her annual party.

Posted in Dining, Wine | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Parc

Posted on December 12, 2017 by thewineraconteur

I used to know Downtown Detroit perfectly, but I was in high school then, and it has changed so much for the better. While Ms. Yoga was in town, one of her girlfriends booked a reservation for nine at a new restaurant in Detroit called Parc. I was kind of the odd one there, as I was the only male at the table, but the lady that had booked it, told my Bride that I would love the restaurant, and she was right. The odd thing was, as we were driving around trying to find the restaurant, is that I felt like the proverbial farmer coming to the city for the first time. I could not place the restaurant, and neither could my Bride who used to work Downtown only a block or two from our destination. We finally found it and it made me feel old. The location was what I knew as Kennedy Square, the site of the old city hall and the park was named after John F. Kennedy who had delivered a speech near there when he was running for the presidency. The name clicked for me, the structure was the pedestrian entrance to the parking structure that was located under the square. Parc was for “park.”


We had a seven o’clock reservation on a Sunday night and the restaurant was packed, which was a great sight for me, remembering the ghost town that Detroit had become for years after I had graduated. The huge Christmas tree was lit, and there was an ice arena for skaters either at the square or the adjacent Campus Martius, as I was losing my grasp of the area, as it had changed so much. There was only a short wait for our table and I got a chance to view this spacious, but cozy restaurant with a nice bar in the center. There is no way that I could relay all nine dishes that were ordered, as my Bride and I were at the end of the table and Ms. Yoga was at the other end, so I will only discuss our meal. My Bride had the Organic Scottish Salmon with crispy skin, Israeli Couscous, grilled rappini, curried carrot puree and yogurt. I had the eight-ounce Creekstone Farms Filet, dry-aged, with Marsala Veal Jus, roasted potatoes with an onion and pepper ragout. We also shared a side of Wild and Local Mushrooms done in white wine and herbs. After dinner we all shared a regional and holiday themed Baked Alaska with green apples and pumpkin mousse that was flamed with an apple-jack brandy.


Parc took advantage of the former parking structure that they were in, because the wine cellar was two stories below in part of the old parking garage which I am sure was all reinforced concrete. The restaurant carries twenty-five-hundred bottles of wine, of which there were three-hundred different red wines and one-hundred-sixty different white wines. On the wine list, the last page was the Unicorn List, which featured the likes of Napa wines like Scarecrow, Bond, Tusk, Harlan Estate and Screaming Eagle while the French listings had two different DRC wines, Chateau Haut-Brion, Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, Chateau Lafite Rothschild and Chateau Margaux. While I was tempted, I did want to be married and alive the next day, so I only read the list. I had actually ordered a Beaujolais Cru for the two of us, the restaurant was out and the manager brought a Beaujolais-Villages as his suggestion, and I have to say, it was the first time that I had ever had a lower wine suggested, instead of trying to up-charge the bill. I declined his offer and ordered another Beaujolais Cru. It was the Thanksgiving weekend and we did not have any Beaujolais-Nouveau, so I was in the mood and prayed that my Bride would enjoy a different wine for the evening. We had a bottle of Pierre-Marie Chemmette Domaine du Vissoux Brouilly Pierreux 2014. The wine was called Pierreux because of the fine stone gravel that this small 1.5-hectare lot at the base of Mont Brouilly had as soil for their sixty-year old vines. This Gamay wine was aged for six months in old oak tuns and it was a delightful wine that my Bride enjoyed with her salmon and it work very easily with my filet. All in all, it was a wonderful evening and a great meal, and the ladies were already making plans to have another dinner in the future.

Posted in Dining, Wine | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

A Little Game

Posted on December 10, 2017 by thewineraconteur

While Ms. Yoga was staying at our home she had contacted some of her other friends and they ended up going to see a little football game at The Big House in Ann Arbor, Michigan during the Thanksgiving weekend. Some of you may not know this, but The Big House is the largest stadium in the United States and is in the top fifty for the world and it is where the University of Michigan has their home games. So, when it is game day there, it is quite a festive day, at least until the outcome of the game is decided and that weekend was one of the classic rivalries in the world of collegiate football. It was a girls outing for the day, which is fine as I really don’t follow sports; I don’t mind playing football, baseball or even golf, I just cannot sit and watch a game. As for the other sports I really don’t follow them at all, or even attempt to play them, as to my eyes, the games just appear to be some form of organized chaos. Though I have to admit that the college athletes play to their full potential, so that they may earn the multi-million-dollar contracts in the professional arena.


Ann Arbor is a city was laid out to be totally to be in grid lock when there is no traffic, so when there is a game, there is no chance to drive unless one likes to have white knuckles. The ladies all decided to meet at Weber’s on the far side of the city from our home and use their shuttle service to go to the game, which made perfect sense to me. Weber’s was founded in 1937 and still in the same family and besides being a restaurant, they also have a hotel and a venue for weddings and other occasions. The ladies all met and went to the Bloody Mary bar to have some libations and get situated, because nowadays they cannot even take a purse into the stadium, which negates the old sports-fan necessity of a hip-flask to ward off the cold weather. After the game, they took the shuttle service back to Webber’s and had a bite to eat in the casual tavern there called The Habitat, instead of dining in the main restaurant. My Bride had a couple of fancy sliders. One was pulled-pork with Cole slaw and the other was blackened salmon with caper aioli, lettuce and tomatoes.


I have to admit that I may have to terminate the employ of Ms. Yoga and my Bride as neither of them took a photograph of the wine that they were having. Alright, I won´t terminate them, I will just cut their salaries down fifty percent, so they will still be making the same salary as I figure. I like to photograph the actual bottle, but this time you will have to bear with me, as I had to get a label from the internet, which goes against the grain of my reporting. Though Ms. Yoga did send a photograph of The Big House which I edited to keep her anonymous. They were enjoying the charms of Chalk Hill Estates Chardonnay 2016 which is in Sonoma County and the wines carry the Chalk Hill AVA. The wine is aged for eleven months in French Oak, of which almost half is new. My Bride and Ms. Yoga both enjoyed it and I think that they use even less descriptors than I do. Chalk Hill Estates is part of the much larger Foley Family Wines group. As for that little game that they watched, let us just say that for this year, the usual ¨speeding¨ tickets that are earmarked for Michigan licensed plated automobiles driving through Ohio may get a reprieve.

Posted in Dining, Wine | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

#CabFrancDay

Posted on December 8, 2017 by thewineraconteur

That title may look rather bizarre for an old curmudgeon like me. I mean the symbol # for me meant either a number or pounds in weight all of my life, but through my wine blogging journey I have now discovered Instagram and Twitter. Be patient with me, because when it comes to using these iPhones I think that I possess all thumbs, and telephones were something that was attached to a wire leading to a wall or they were wall mounted with a curly cord that always stayed tangled. I was fortunate that when I was a child we actually had a single-family phone number that I can still remember to this day and it had an area exchange for the first two digits and to this day I can not remember the number to my own cell phone.


This is all a preamble to a night on Twitter called #CabFrancDay and Twitter is a modern-day convenience or inconvenience where one can post messages under a certain character count and for a fellow like me that rambles, it is not easy. Lori from Dracaena Wines was the main instigator for creating Cabernet Franc Day to publicize this fine varietal that is finally being accepted on its own. Today’s wine bloggers have it so much easier to learn about wines, than I did back in the dark ages when one had to buy books and hopefully find a wine merchant that was knowledgeable. I am more Twentieth Century, but I may eventually enter the Twenty-first Century. I had to message another blogger that I respect for the simple instructions on how to go about joining into the festivities of this two-hour love fest about Cabernet Franc wines. My first inclination was to open a bottle of Dracaena Cabernet Franc that I had purchased and sent to my daughter’s house in Las Vegas last year before I went to visit the kids and the grandchildren. It appeared to me that Dracaena was going to be the wine of choice from others, so I had to decide on another wine, and we had just had an old-world Cabernet Franc as one of our wines for Thanksgiving. I think that I drove my Bride crazy, but she was game for a glass of this wonderful grape.


I went into the cellar and found something interesting that I thought would be different from what most of the others were going to be touting, and I was right. So, after chilling the wine a bit, I took a photo of the bottle and a glass to show the rich color and I posted it at the beginning of the two hours. I also made sure that I poured my Bride some of it to enjoy as well. It brought back some happy memories of a trip that we had made just to do wine tastings and some fine dining in the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario, Canada. The wine was Jackson-Triggs Grand Reserve Cabernet Franc Icewine 2014 with the Niagara Peninsula VQA. This wine was made using grapes that had naturally frozen on the vines when the temperature drops below -10°C and the juice is gently extracted, because of the concentrated sugar in the grapes. The wine was sublime and very silky. I figured that because I had posted so early my wine selection that it would be lost in the crowd of other posters, but people actually noticed it, and one even asked if it tasted like strawberries. Now everyone has gotten used to the fact that I tend not to use descriptors, but I responded that I thought more like pomegranate, but I neglected to mention with the trademark spice that I enjoy with Cabernet Franc. I must say that the love fest was one of the fastest two hours that I have ever spent, and then I noticed that even the next day I had some notifications about my post, so I guess I wasn’t totally left out in the cold that evening, and afterwards I discovered that even my Bride enjoyed the wine, which I knew she would.

Posted in Wine | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Cab Franc Day

Posted on December 6, 2017 by thewineraconteur

For years I felt that I was the voice crying out in the wilderness, which is apropos, since my Armenian name translates to John the Baptist, I guess my Grandmother knew me, before I was born. Why do I say that I was the voice in the wilderness? I guess that is because I was enamored with Cabernet Franc years back and I tried to get others to try something new. I have also created a Cabernet Franc devotee with my Bride and I have not told her about the day and will surprise her this evening with something special. In the early days when finding good wines was the eternal quest, I discovered this grape. My wallet was not flush then and to be truthful, my wallet’s status has not changed. I have to applaud Lori and Michael of Dracaena Wines in Paso Robles for spearheading the movement to create Cabernet Franc Day.


In the early days, the most common wines that one could find in Michigan were Clarets and Cabernet Franc was one of the varietals used in blending that made the Bordeaux wines famous. I was even fortunate to discover some red wines from the Loire Valley, namely from Saumur and Chinon. I was even fortunate to have Chateau Ausone which is basically half Cabernet Franc, and I have had Chateau Cheval Blanc which is almost two-thirds Cabernet Franc, so some estates knew a good thing when they had it.


Lately the world has seemed to discover its merits as well. I have enjoyed wines from California, Ohio and even here in Michigan where it seems to be doing quite well. I have even discovered some wonderful Cabernet Franc wines made in the Niagara Region of Ontario, Canada. They have even made some wonderful Ice Wines and I think that is what I may open tonight to celebrate. I hope everyone has the chance to open up a bottle of Cabernet Franc as well.

Posted in Wine | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Black Friday

Posted on December 4, 2017 by thewineraconteur

The common story that is related about Black Friday is it is the first day of the year that the major department stores show a profit, after all the shenanigans that they play for the first eleven months of the year. I have just about spent my entire career working for independent clothiers, so every day is important and Black Friday is just another day on the calendar. Black Friday has kind of morphed into this crazy day when people feel that they have to shop and it has disrupted the family day known as Thanksgiving. I guess it is because I can remember Blue Laws and days when families actually spend the day together, but retail is no longer the genteel industry that it once was. Thankfully for us, our shopping is done by Thanksgiving Day and we live like paupers to pay off all of the bills in December, so that we can get away in January.


I worked on Black Friday for part of the day and when I got home, it was almost like a repeat of the day before, except that most of the revelers were tired from the extended hours of shopping. The majority of the guests were here the day before, but there were some new faces to come and eat the left-overs, so that nobody would have to cook. We also had Ms. Yoga who came in that day to celebrate the weekend with us and it was her voice that greeted me first when I came in the front door. There was still plenty of food from the day before and I am sure that the dinner was a joyous respite from the travails of shopping at the malls. By the time I got there, they had all eaten and were just commiserating about the day’s adventures.


The dinner was perhaps a repeat, but there were new wines opened and poured. Two of the wines that were featured came from Sonoma County and it appears that they were appreciated. The first wine was from Martin Ray Vineyard and Winery, their 2016 Chardonnay. This was an easy drinking Chardonnay that was a blend of fruits harvested from Russian River, Sonoma Valley and Carneros. The wine was aged for a couple of months in French Oak, of which thirty-five percent were new and the balance were neutral to allow the fruit to shine. The other wine was one that I originally knew when it was made in Napa Valley and now it is produced in Sonoma. The Duckhorn Vineyards Decoy Pinot Noir 2015 was a good serviceable wine, but it is well made large production wine. It was aged for eight months in French Oak of which thirty percent was new. It was a nice dinner and there was not the urgency to leave like the night before and everyone was just savoring the meal and the rest.

Posted in Dining, Wine | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment