Dinner at Home

Posted on November 13, 2016 by thewineraconteur

I am quite not sure, how there are two distinct cooking methods at my house, but I am always amazed. When I cook, there are multiple sets of dishes that are used just in the prepping of the food and it is an all-day affair. I work up a sweat to try to achieve a dinner, for the most part successfully, but like I say it is a day in the kitchen. My Bride on the other hand creates dishes that are wonderful and totally efficient.

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The other day, she decided that she was going to make us some lamb stew. I am very partial to stews, especially in the fall and winter months, but I am just amazed at the speed that she accomplishes her goal. I think I would still be dicing and cubing the meats and vegetables while her meal is already half-way done. The other thing that always surprises me, is that she does it all with one pot and just a carving board, which would never work out for me. I guess that I just keep chopping and putting everything in separate bowls to make sure that I like the mix and balance before I start. Maybe time just slows down for me when I get in the kitchen. One great thing about stew, is that there is never any concern about plating the dish for presentation, it is pure and simply comfort food.

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I went down into the cellar to look for something different to try with the stew. Lamb tends to be a showy meat when it is roasted or made into kebabs. I find that the taste becomes more delicate when it is in a stew, so I was looking for something a bit more mellow and not something that we would normally have at home. I went and looked at some of the splits or half-bottles that we have accumulated over the years and found a wine that I thought should be ready for drinking, and hopefully I didn’t keep it too long. I opened up a bottle of Alexander Valley Vineyards Wetzel Family Estate Merlot 1997 from the Alexander Valley in Sonoma County. I like a good Merlot and I enjoy how it works so well with red meats. Now I sometimes forget about the splits that we have and I sometimes worry that they age quicker, but the cork gave me a battle and it came out totally intact with no crumbling at all. Immediately I could smell the Merlot perfume and I looked at the bottle and notice that there was a decent patch of sediment near the neck of the bottle, because the bottle has been resting in the same location probably since we purchased it, as there was a time when we were buying a lot more splits, but they do not seem as easy to find anymore. I didn’t bother decanting the wine, but just poured it directly into the glasses and watched to see if I saw any sediment and towards the end of the third glass I saw a little bit, so I stopped. I was a little concerned, because the wine had a bit of brown in the color, but the taste was excellent, the tannins and the fruit both had softened and it was a pleasure to drink this wine and it was so mellow with the stew.

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Jacobson’s

Posted on November 11, 2016 by thewineraconteur

As I was repacking one of the closets in the basement, there was a hat box and not mine from Jacobson’s. Jacobson’s if you weren’t aware of the chain was what one would call a “Carriage” store, meaning that they catered to a better clientele, not that they were that expensive, but they had a cachet that appealed to plenty of people. I was in the retail industry all of my life and there was an old adage “in three generations shirt sleeve to shirt sleeve.” What that meant was what the first two generations worked so hard to achieve, the third generation allowed it to fall away. I worked in a store that was in the middle of two Jacobson’s stores and they made for great competition.


Jacobson’s was a class act in their day and I remember getting those beautiful Rothschild coats for my favorite daughter when she was just a little girl. I didn’t need to shop there for men’s clothes, but I was probably there at least once a day and sometimes twice a day and that was to eat. They had a wonderful restaurant on the second floor and it was just perfect. It was always clean and the staff in the restaurant was just as attentive as the sales staff at the registers. I think that the restaurant was underwritten by the store to make the meals great bargains as a way to keep the customers in the store longer. There was always a fixed menu and a couple of specials for lunch and two specials for the two evenings that they stayed open late. It sure beat brown bagging lunch and when they had Braised Short Ribs as a special, I considered it a “Red Letter Day.”

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Some of the other Jacobson’s stores sold wine, but the one in Dearborn did not, and perhaps it was the politics of getting the license, which was an impossibility in the old days, as a liquor license carried a very hefty surcharge for anyone that wanted to secure it. For a short period of time, there was wine in the restaurant, they had about six different bottles to choose from; and the rumor was that the license was a resort license that was transferred from another part of the state, and like I say, it was only for a short time. One of the wines that I would enjoy during dinner in that short period was Chateau Roubaud. This particular wine from France carried the VDQS stamp, which stood for Wine Delimited of Superior Quality or a better “table wine” back in the day. The winery was established in 1900 in the southern most region of the Rhone and in 1950 they were one of a few wineries that were allowed to carry the Costieres du Gard on the label, which eventually changed to the Appellation Controlee of Costieres de Nimes. The winery grows Grenache, Syrah, Carignan, Cinsault, Mourvedre, Roussanne, Clairette and Ugni Blanc and today the wine must be at least sixty percent of a blend of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre. It was a most pleasant of wines and I have been partial to Rhone wines almost from the beginning of my wine appreciation days. Even after they lost the ability to sell wines in the restaurant I continued dining there until the end of their days. I guess that the current generation could not maintain the vision that they were given.

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Shamrocks

Posted on November 9, 2016 by thewineraconteur

I have never been to any of my high school reunions, only because my graduating class was huge, I mean like university size. I only basically knew my homeroom class from my curriculum, my school was immense as it was one entire city block in size and nine stories tall, and we were all from different parts of the city. I recently went to a high school reunion as a guest and this class was about thirteen hundred in size, but there were only about one hundred of the alumni that attended this reunion. I will not give the date of the class, but I went with my Bride and outside of the eight people at our table, I knew no one else and my Bride did not know that many more that were there. The funny thing is that one of her sisters also was attending her reunion for the same school, albeit a different year at another location, on that same night, so there were Shamrocks celebrating at another place as well.

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The reunion was held at De Carlo’s a catering hall within the general area of where she had grown up, though it was far enough away from where we now live, that we decided to get a hotel room for the evening. The reunion also had a disc-jockey who volunteered his services as he was also an alumnus of the class. The disc-jockey played the music of that year and even included a countdown of the top twenty songs of that year. Unfortunately, there was another party in the next room over and they played music their music so loud that the music in our room was almost drowned out, except when one was on the dance floor. There was a video of classmates that are no longer here and they had several drawings and the funny thing is that both my Bride and I had winning tickets. There was a dinner catered by the hall that evening and they had an open bar. The food was the standard array that catering halls live by and it was set up as a buffet in a side room to the main hall. There were several salads with assorted dressings, a couple of different vegetables and three entrée servings of chicken, pork chops and roast beef. After dinner, a sweet table was set up for dessert and coffee.

The bar area was one of the busiest spots that evening and the bartender seemed to keep everyone happy. We were in an upstairs hall of the complex and it was quite warm and it seemed to get even warmer after people started dancing. On occasions like this I tend to order white wine, because it is chilled and if there is no complexity to the wine the chill tends to mask it and make it more palatable, and it works no matter what I decided to have from the buffet line. My Bride and I were having Vista Point Vineyards Chardonnay NV from California and I am sure that it must be a popular winery for catering halls as it is probably a good profit enhancer. The wine had a slightly off taste at first, that seemed to disappear while having dinner and after dinner I just got acclimated to the taste and it was chilled. We attended not for the culinary or wine aspects of the evening, so all was good. By the way I discovered that the number two and number one songs of that year were:” Maggie May” and “Jeremiah Was a Bull Frog,” but that evening Jeremiah forgot to bring his very fine wine.

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“What a Great Job We Have Lucky!”

Posted on November 7, 2016 by thewineraconteur

That was a recent tweet that myself and many other bloggers received a couple of days ago on Twitter. Writing about wines and dinners may sound glamorous, or it may sound like boasting, but you have to remember that some of the memories go back to the late Sixties and not since I began having fun recording the days gone by. This is more of a self-exploration, because that tweet made me ponder my writing, especially my conceit of being at a table with another person having a glass of wine and chatting about that moment that I am thinking about. What I am doing on Twitter is a total mystery to me still, but I think that I am getting the hang of it. After I liked the original post and then retweeted it, the subject of the post kind of haunted me. I write a wine blog, but I am not a professional in the wine industry in any sort of capacity, and believe me when I tell you that my blog is not a job. I have no designations, I am not a sommelier, or even thinking of becoming one, hell in my day they were called wine stewards, if they even had a title back then. I write not to dazzle or to say “look at me,” rather I write in hopes that someone that has an interest in wine, might take that next step and go out beyond their comfort zone, as God knows we all can get cocooned into certain areas.

Ch Pichon Lalande 1964
All of the wine that I have written about, is from the “School of Hard Knocks” as they would say from my old neighborhood. The majority of my “knowledge” was from self-studies and from having the chance to have purchased some great wines over the last four decades or so. That is not to say that I haven’t had some great mentors and I tend to be an avid reader for all of my avocations. I could not even have made a great wine snob, because I started when I was a real student and not just a student of wine. You will have to pardon me for the fact that I do not write about wines with all of the descriptive words that most people use today, as even my mentors back then, did not use such words. We used “this is a great wine” or “this is a nice table wine.” When I was first taught how to taste wine, there was never even any mention of “spitting.” Perhaps this was because my mentors all had survived the Great Depression and that probably seemed like a wasteful extravagance to them.

Ch Ducru-Beaucaillou 1970
I have never solicited wine or received wine for reviews. Of course, the way I write about wine, I may never have to worry about that. I grew up with wine in a very eclectic way and I have drunk wines that most people might not even admit to have tried, to wines that I am still amazed that I have had the good fortune to have tried as well. I always try to look at the bright side of wines, though there are some that really don’t appeal to me, but maybe growing up like I did, the thought of leaving a partially filled glass of wine is anathema to me. In fact, there was only one time during a tasting that I did not finish some of my tastings, because I think the special tasting-tour that we paid for at one winery, we ended up tasting every bottle of wine that they produced and I really only paid for the special tasting to try their top of the line, that we bought, and it was worth it. I think of myself as a rank-amateur, but I have had some spectacular wines over the years and then I have written about wines that could make some bloggers shudder. I have had the chance to enjoy two of the greatest vintages from the last century, but I have never had the stellar 1945. So, for every 1921 Richebourg there have been hundreds of wines that I have recalled that are from catering halls and the corner market. With the upward spiraling prices of wines, I can guarantee that some of the wines on my bucket list will probably never be fulfilled, because they are now too dear and I am preparing to eventually retire, but there is still plenty of wine that is cellared and still many restaurants to try. So, if this is my fun job, I would say that I am very lucky indeed.

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Success (?)

Posted on November 5, 2016 by thewineraconteur

I think that I have found a way to remove the stubborn labels that refuse to leave a wine bottle. I know it sounds silly, but I like to save the labels to look back on, and they are great for writing articles about, as I often do. I was out in the garage cleaning, and discarding stuff; getting ready for the winter and I found a tool, that I thought might be beneficial. The tool was a Black & Decker High Speed Paint Stripper which is a heat gun with a couple of scraping attachments. As I lamented a few articles ago, I have a couple of cartons of empty bottles with the labels that refuse to budge, using the most popular techniques.

I put the push scraper attachment onto the heat gun and fired it up. I decided to try the highest setting and it was actually browning the paper label as it was being removed. I ceased and let the tool cool down a bit, as well as the bottle. I went to the lowest setting and I thought I was doing good, but I guess I was not and must have been impatient, as the first label ripped half way through, but I eventually got the second part off as well and then I taped the two parts together, and for my scrap book it will be fine. The first bottle that I tried was Chateau du Pavillon 2000 from Saint-Croix-du-Mont.

If you try using this tool, you will discover that it is a lot more work, then just heating up the label and peeling off the label. I have broken up concrete that was less straining. I then decided that perhaps I could combine two techniques together to see if that would facilitate the removal. So, I put a bottle into the oven at two-hundred-fifty degrees for ten minutes, hoping that it would at least soften up the glue some, as this label had defied boiling water from the outside and from the inside, as well as just the baking. After letting it bake, I then applied the heat gun and slowly got a toe-hold and just kept working back and forth. I now have a label from Clos Du Bois Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 from Alexander Valley. Every time and every label from this winery has ended up a total mess and flung into the trash can. I think that I have found a potential cure for the permanent label adhesive, but I will keep working on it, as you noticed, I started off with smaller labels and more affordable wines. The Opus One bottles have huge labels, and after doing two bottles, my right hand was actually sore; so, I shall have to pace myself. I guess it is time for a glass of wine.

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My Sneaky Trick

Posted on November 3, 2016 by thewineraconteur

My sneaky trick has nothing to do with politics, so you can breathe a sigh of relief. It is just something I do when we are traveling and staying at hotels. If one is in the wine country, this isn’t necessary to do, but everywhere else it is. I didn’t take my wine carrier with us, as I wasn’t sure how much time we would be able to enjoy a glass of wine in the room and I didn’t take a bottle of wine either, since the laws in Michigan about wine have changed. In the old days, if you had ordered a bottle of wine with dinner, you had to finish the bottle or leave it, and as you know I like to save the labels, and you could always take an empty bottle home with you. Nowadays in Michigan, if you don’t finish your bottle of wine, you can have your server recork the bottle and take the unfinished bottle with you. This is much better as you don’t have to worry about drinking too much. That and I always have a corkscrew in my grooming bag.

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I always like to stop and take a look at what is being offered in the little sundry shop that most hotels have these days, as sometimes I might want some Lifesavers or in case I forgot to pack something. I also take a look to see if there is any wine being sold to take back to the room. The first one that I stayed at, did not have any wine glasses and the only wine to be purchased was small individual drink size bottles of Sutter Home, so I passed.

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I then crossed the lobby and walked into the bar and asked if I could take a couple of glasses of wine up to my room and they said “yes.” So I ordered a couple of glasses of wine, and that is how I usually have wine glasses in the room for later, if we decide to have some wine before retiring for the night. I usually get a couple of easy drinking wines this way and this last time was no different. The first wine was Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay 2014. This California wine is found almost everywhere and it is always a safe wine to order. By the magic of the winemaker and grapes purchased across the entire length of the state, they can produce a wine that is rather consistent year after year with no surprises, and the odds are that the bottle of wine in the bar is always either brand new or just recently opened, because it is that popular. The second glass of wine was one that I have had often in several different vintages and it has also proven to be very safe. Caposaldo Pinot Grigio delle Venezie IGT 2015 is a Pinot Grigio grown in an area where it is not native to in Italy, hence the IGT designation. The Veneto area is known for Valpolicella, Amarone, Soave and Prosecco; so, anything else can either be a table wine or an IGT. So, there is my little trick to make sure that I have some wine glasses in the room and I can start the afternoon off with a wine that will not run afoul of whatever wine is chosen later to go with dinner.

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Butch’s Dry Dock

Posted on November 1, 2016 by thewineraconteur

After spending the day exploring and shopping in the downtown district of Holland, we were getting ready to have our dinner and celebrate the last night of our anniversary weekend. When I called to make the reservation, the young lady asked if there was an occasion and if we had been there before, and after answering her queries she informed me that they would give us an honored table. We were seated right in front at the window looking at the main street that we had spent all day shopping on and there was a handwritten message on our table saying Happy Anniversary that could even been seen by the people on the street. I was really looking forward to dinner at Butch’s as they are one of about eight hundred restaurants in the country that hold the Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence. The restaurant carries about eight hundred different wines in stock.

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Butch’s Dry Dock has a very tight and concise menu that doesn’t ramble for pages, and there were a couple of special dishes for the evening. We started off by sharing a plate of Brussel Sprouts prepared with Kimchi and house made bacon. We each had the Local Garden Salad. My Bride had one of the specials of the evening Sirloin Tips in a rich sauce served on a bed of pasta, and I had thought of ordering it, but she had chosen it first. I had their classic entrée Filet au Poivre with Chippewa potatoes, turnips, carrots and green beans. As we were sharing tastings from each other’s plates we decided that we had made a wise choice for dinner. The restaurant offered us a complimentary dessert for the occasion, but we chose to share one order of Crème Brulee and thanked them for the kind gesture.

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Butch’s Dry Dock besides being a restaurant was also a wine retailer. The actual wine list for the restaurant was only a couple of dozen bottles and most of them were suggested as wine pairings for different dishes. The eight hundred different wines were either in racks or refrigerator cases and one could look at all the wines and choose. The selection was heavy into French and California wines, but there were also other wines from the Continent and some excellent Michigan wine selections as well. Since all of the wines were offered at retail, there was a ten-dollar corkage fee and I thought that was fair, since the wines were not marked up at the usual restaurant pricing. As I wandered the racks, I kept returning to the area where the Claret wines were and I decided on Chateau Pedesclaux Pauillac 2011. I mean one does not often find wines from the Pauillac and this wine was rated as a Cinquieme Grand Cru Classe from the 1855 rating that for the most part has still held up very well, and what it means is that it was a Fifth Growth. Chateau Pedesclaux was established in 1810 and has one hundred twenty acres and a very modern winery structure. The winery grows Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc. They also have a second wine that is produced that is predominately Merlot called Fleur de Pedesclaux. The wine that we had was aged for twelve months in mostly new French Oak before bottling. Of all the wines of the Medoc, I seem to gravitate the most to Pauillac and Margaux and the wine did not disappoint. If and when we get back to Holland, I would make a point of dining here again.

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A Day in Holland

Posted on October 30, 2016 by thewineraconteur

What a wonderful way to spend the day. The downtown district of Holland was so interesting, not only for the mixture of shops and restaurants, but also so idyllic. The downtown district had pulled up all the sidewalks and had it replaced with paver stones, but before they laid the stones, the entire district had a system installed whereas the entire area has no snow or shoveling which makes it great for visitors. There were also little areas of statuary to accentuate the small-town flavor and make one feel at home. Most of the time I stayed on the sidewalk, people watching and appreciating the architecture and facades of the buildings while my Bride shopped. I think her shopping that day may have doubled the cost of our long weekend, but besides getting herself some new clothes, she also bought future birthday presents as well as some additional Christmas shopping. With all of the walking, we decided to have a quick bit for lunch, so as not to ruin our dinner plans.

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We started looking at the menus of some of the restaurants up and down the street, in hopes of finding some good wine as well. I mean why not, we were relaxing and had no time table to observe, other than our dinner reservation. We settled on a quaint spot and walked into their coffee and pastry shop and had to walk around to get a table for lunch. AlpenRose has been in Holland for twenty-five years at least and looking at the menu it seemed more Austro-Hungarian instead of Dutch, but that was fine. We both wanted to get a bowl of soup just to hold us until dinner and as I looked at the menu, if we ever get back to Holland, I think that I would like to have dinner there. Their French Onion soup was a blend of seven different onions, beef consommé, Swiss cheese, crouton and topped with haystack onions.

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The wine list which was not huge was well thought out and had some fine wines and none of them were on the list just for pretense, even the wines that were sold by the glass. My Bride had Gouguenheim Valle Escondido Tupungato Malbec Reserva 2012. Tupungato is a sub region of Uco Valley, the premier wine district of Argentina and where Malbec reigns. The winery was started in 2002 as the owners bought an old winery and brought it back to life. The Reserva is aged for eight months in French oak, whereas the basic wine is only aged for four months. For a new wine, this Malbec was very easy to drink and delivered what one would expect from that grape. I on the other hand ordered an old friend that I seldom see any more, so I was excited to try it, as we had bought a lot of their wines when we visited the winery. The St. Supery Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 was excellent. This wine was entirely made from their own vineyards in Napa Valley utilizing grapes from their Dollarhide Estate Vineyard and their Rutherford Estate Vineyard. While the wine was basically Cabernet Sauvignon it was blended with a small amount of Petite Verdot and Malbec. St. Supery was established in 1989 and we have fond memories of going there during harvest. This particular wine was aged for eighteen months in French Oak before bottling and it was wonderful. In fact, there was a table of women next to us that were ordering wine and a couple of them were thinking red, so I could not help, but interject and suggest the wine that I was drinking and when they tasted it, they thanked me for the suggestion. Then we were off for more shopping until dinner.

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Holland, Michigan

Posted on October 28, 2016 by thewineraconteur

Another place in Michigan that I had never been to, on the west side of the state. We got in late in the afternoon, because of the board meeting that we attended on the east side of the state, so we had a bit of a drive. We made good time on the road and after we got to our hotel we called to see if we could change our dinner reservation to an earlier time, but it was not possible, so after we unpacked and got situated, we went to the downtown area. It was a beautiful and quite large downtown area with some great facades on the buildings. We really could not do much that first night, but my Bride was able to sneak in some shopping. I think we really don’t do much more than shop, and wine and dine. It is our patriotic duty to keep the economy running.


When we had booked our hotel room, the hotel touted us on a restaurant which we booked for our first night, as there was a restaurant that I really wanted to try, but I saved that one for the next night. We went to Boatwerks and it was a very nice looking waterfront establishment, and outside was a beautiful old style wooden speed boat on display. We were not really hungry because we had such a large breakfast and lunch that was served at the board meeting, but we knew that we had better keep our reservation and eat something. We were going to eat light that evening and it was just as well, because the restaurant was more of a sports bar and eatery, and I have to say that I don’t mind televisions going on in the bar area, but I dislike them in the dining room, just a pet peeve of mine. My Bride settled on having the Beet Salad which was Arugula, Blood Orange vinaigrette, roasted Golden Beets, red onion, Country Wind goat cheese, pickled raisins, toasted Pepitas and topped with a grilled chicken breast. I tried the Mexi Dip Sampler which was warm Chipotle Black Bean dip, Guacamole, Salsa Roja and fresh fried El Milagro tortilla chips. The food was better than most sport bars that I had been too, so we were both happy.


The wine list was not extensive, but we did find a couple of wines of interest. My Bride had Albertoni Chardonnay 2014 which was a California wine from the Bronco Wine Company  group. While it was listed as a Chardonnay, it was a proprietary blend with Viognier and Chenin Blanc and it was tasty. I usually refrain from having wine with my salad, but my Bride does not. I had a glass of Lindeman’s Winery Gentleman’s Collection Red Blend No. 2 2014. Lindeman’s Winery was founded in 1843 by Dr. John Lindeman, but this wine also carried a California AVA and was a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache and Shiraz and it had enough character to hold up to the spicy dish that I had and enjoyed. Our first night in Holland and we knew that there was much more to discover.

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Old City Hall

Posted on October 26, 2016 by thewineraconteur

Old City Hall Restaurant is in Bay City, Michigan and it is located in the building that was the old city hall of the city. We ended up in Bay City, because I was tagging along going as a guest for a board meeting, the dinner was Thursday night and then the meeting was Friday morning. I had been near the city before, but had never been there and the restaurant was only about two blocks from the hotel where the meeting would be held and we were staying at. Everything was prearranged, so I just went with the flow and I tried to be a wall-flower. Though it was the beginning of a long weekend that we were on to celebrate our anniversary, so I was doing research on the spots where we were going to go, and most of the time my research is fruitful.

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I had looked at the menu of Old City Hall and there was much that had piqued my interest. The dinner for the board meeting was being held in a private side room that had a bar as well, just for the group. The menu for the evening had been pre-selected and they were fine choices. Of course, yours truly is kind of “high maintenance” and I had to ask for substitutions starting with the salad course. They were offering salads with three different dressings, Ranch, Blue Cheese and Raspberry Vinaigrette; and I was able to get Italian dressing, just a simple request and that was easy. There were three choices for our entrée offerings. Salmon braised in fish stock with a Thyme and Citrus Crème Fraiche, which I did not see being served near me. The T-Bone Steak with Roasted Garlic Fingerling Potatoes and green beans seemed to be the choice of the majority. The last choice of the evening was Chicken Oscar, a variation of the classic Veal Oskar where this was a sautéed chicken breast topped with blue crabmeat, asparagus and a white wine butter sauce served with garlic mashed potatoes and green beans and that is what my Bride had ordered. This is where my chutzpah really came to the forefront, because I asked the server that I had noticed that they had on the regular menu Duck Confit served with a “lobi” which was a mixture of beans. Our server said that it would not be a problem, as the duck was priced less than the dishes being served and I was a happy camper, especially because it was prepared perfectly and it was one of the largest servings I had ever seen. I had been prepared to pay for my dinner if there would have been any problems with my substitution.

starborough-marlborough-sauvignon-blanc-2015
We started off the evening having some wine by the glass during the cocktail hour period and we had a most pleasant Starborough Winery Sauvignon Blanc 2015 from Marlborough region of New Zealand. Marlborough is the main wine growing region of New Zealand and Sauvignon Blanc is almost synonymous with Marlborough. It is a fresh and flinty tasting wine that is just so refreshing and a great way to start off a meal. We finished off the meal with Taylor Fladgate Late Bottled Vintage Port 2010. Taylor Fladgate is one of the most accessible of Port wines from Oporto in the Douro Region of Portugal. Late Bottled Vintage Ports are almost issued every year as compared to Vintage Port and the Late Bottled Vintage Ports stay in the barrel between four and six years and is a great way to appreciate Port without the major expense of a vintage declaration. Port wines are a mysterious blend of many varietals and perhaps the only one to know exactly would be the winemaker, but some of the vines have intermingled over the years, so it may be moot to be able to totally identify the grapes. The most common and traditional grapes are: Touriga Franca, Tinta Barroca, Tinta Roritz, Tinta Cao, Sousao, Tinta Amarela and Mourisco Tinto. The wine that we had between the two that I have mentioned I purchase separately as I did not want any complaints that I was taking advantage of the largesse of the board members, even though after they had found out that we were celebrating our anniversary. I selected a wine, even before I found out that I could have the Duck Confit, so it was not a Pinot Noir wine. The restaurant had on their wine carte Louis Jadot Puligny-Montrachet 2011 and that is not a Chardonnay wine encountered that often. Puligny-Montrachet is in the Cote de Beaune region of Burgundy and it is home to four Grand Cru and seventeen Premier Cru appellations. While both red and white wines are found in Puligny-Montrachet, it is the white wines that are famed. It was worth the added expense to have that wine with the meal. The next day we had breakfast and lunch with the board and after the meeting was completed we were off to enjoy the rest of the weekend.

taylor-fladgate-lbv-2010

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