This Casa de Ermelinda Freitas Valorosa 2010 is intriguing. First of all, we just don’t drink many Portuguese wines. Second, it is very fruit-flavored (dark, blackberry fruit) without being sweet or fruit-bomb-y. A very pleasant, surprising wine. I think Melody will enjoy the other bottle of this when she comes home.
This is where Melody describes what she is cooking. I’ll just say that this big Valoroso should go well with my hamburger.
We are big fans of Hess Select Cabernet Sauvignon. For some reason it puts us in particularly good moods. It’s big, tannic, and drinkable.
We are back from a great visit to the Upper Peninsula with some of our sibs. We saw the Ben Daniels Band in Marquette, had some great meals in Au Train, and hiked Pictured Rocks in Munising. We had a blast.
We had the Hess Cab with chicken legs, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Excellent.
Melody made an excellent ground beef, tomato, and pasta dish, with sides of beets and cucumbers, and we had this Kelly Country Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 from Victoria, Australia. (I think this is a wine from the Wall Street Journal wine club.)
This wine is quite good. Tannic, fruity but not fruit-bomby. I tasted a bit of cigar ash. Melody tasted some licorice. It served as a great table wine with Melody’s hearty dish.
We were both feeling tired (even though it’s only Monday!), so the good food and wine helped.
(By the way, this wine is named for the armour-wearing Australian outlaw Ned Kelly.)
It’s midweek and we are having this delicious Paso Robles Liberty School Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 to celebrate a hard day’s work. I am taking four days vacation this week and we are spending our free time doing projects around the house. We have worked very hard and we feel pleasantly, happily exhausted by the end of the day. The weather is slightly cooler today and we have the air conditioning turned off and the windows open.
I made a meatloaf, baked potatoes, garlic toast and sauteed Swiss Chard (from the food co-op) for dinner. Just what we needed after a physically demanding day. The wine has blackberry and cranberry aromas. The taste is very fruity with blackberry, chocolate and vanilla. Tomorrow will be another wonderful day at home!
We had this delicious Hess Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 on our Saturday night while we grilled barbecued chicken. We like this wine very much. The wine is rich with fruit flavors and gentle tannins.
(We’ve had this wine several times and each time has been memorable.)
A storm blew in during our cocktail hour and ended by the time we were ready to move outside and grill the chicken.
We had a fun Saturday together. I started my day with a run with my girlfriends before it got too hot. There were five of us this morning: Pat, Christi, Chris, Jeanie and me. We ran pretty fast on the country roads because every time we ran in the wooded, shaded areas, we were swarmed by deer flies, so we had to keep speeding up to outrun them.
Tom & I gave into the heat at about 5:00 this afternoon after walking Trigger. . .decided to close the windows and turn on the air conditioner. It’s going to be in the 90′s all week.
So tonight we started our evening with a Negroni cocktail. It was our first. I had read an article on it and we decided to try it. For two of us: 2 oz. gin, 2 oz. sweet vermouth, 2 oz. Campari. Shaken over ice and poured over a short glass with ice and topped with an orange slice. We really enjoyed it very much.
After our cocktail, we grilled steaks and asparagus and had a glass of this Bliss Family Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 from Mendocino, California. This is a structured Cab with spice and blueberries on the nose . The taste has some oak and a touch of mint with a dark chocolate finish. A great wine for a blissful weekend!
A long and arduous day at work today but happy to be home and relaxing. We are having this Lindeman’s Bin #45 Cabernet 2010 tonight with a dinner of grilled Brats, sauteed red cabbage and potatoes. We enjoyed sitting on the patio with our glass of wine, listening to the birds and feeling the soft, summer breeze while the Brats were grilling. I like this wine very much.
Tom & I used to purchase this regularly when we initially started enjoying red wine. This is a great value. Authentically fruit forward, soft tannins and juicy on the palate with a long finish. Happy news: Tomorrow is Friday!!
We are back from a spectacularly wonderful Werner family reunion in Texas. We had the best time together — talking, swimming, cooking, eating, talking, laughing, swimming, eating, drinking, shooting, hiking, talking & laughing, stargazing, eating & drinking, listening to classic-country music and watching for falling stars while sitting at the pool kicking our feet in the cool water. It was GREAT!! I LOVE our family.
So tonight we are back home. I had taken a small zip-lock bag out of the freezer with some left-over country ham. I used the ham for a ham & noodle dish recipe that I came upon. It was very easy, tasty and filling. Along with the main dish, I cooked fresh beets from the food co-op and sauteed dandelion greens (from my neighbor). All in all, satisfying and comforting. Speaking of comforting, I purchased an old favorite, Lindeman’s Bin 45 Cabernet Sauvignon 2010, at our grocery story tonight. Bin 45 Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the first wines that Tom & I enjoyed together many years ago. We had read that this was a great value and we enjoyed it on a regular basis. It was fun to pick it up again. Although simple, this is a fun, fruit-forward Australian red that is a easy to drink and quite delicious.
We have been absent from our blog for several months due to obligations and distractions. We will try to do better. So, tonight, after a very hectic work day, I put together a meal on the fly and Tom opened this Smoking Loon Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 that he bought this weekend on sale at our local grocery store. Frankly, I was expecting not to like it because a) I didn’t like the look of the label (stupid, but true) and 2) I somewhat close-mindedly assumed that a wine on sale at our local grocery store would be marginal, at best. However, this wine is not all bad. It is a drinkable and enjoyable midweek quaff. The nose is very off-putting at first, but it gets better after it breathes for awhile. This is a pleasant, black fruit-rich wine with strong tannins. The finish is slightly bitter but in a good way.
For dinner, I started with a pound of ground beef from the freezer. I ended with a hamburger stroganoff that was very tasty, thanks to lots of spices, chicken broth and sour cream.
It is so good to be home after a 6-day work trip. Time to relax and enjoy the last night before official summer begins tomorrow!
Tonight we are having this Penfold’s Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet 2008 blend. This wine has become a standby for us because it is a good value and a quintessential high-quality Australian big, juicy red. We stock up when we find it on sale for about $10 at our local grocery store. I enjoy the taste of plums & blueberries coupled with dry, pucker-producing tannins. The dark chocolate finish is so satisfying, who needs dessert?
For dinner, we grilled chicken breasts that I had rubbed with a mixture of brown sugar, chili powder, oregano and olive oil. I heated up leftover cheesy potato casserole and I also steamed fresh green beans. It made for a very tasty dinner which we thoroughly enjoyed. We really enjoy sitting on our patio enjoying our wine while Tom does the grilling.
