Amalaya 2009 is another one of the cool new wines we’ve been tasting.
It’s a Malbec blend from the Calchaqui Valley in northwestern Argentina.
It’s a big, bright-tasting red, big but the fruit taste is not dark fruit but more like cherry.
Very different and appealing. This is another wine that we could make a regular.
(The label says that “Amalaya” means “hope for a miracle” in the language of the indigenous people of the Calchaqui Valley. Cool.)
Tom & I enjoyed this rich and tobacco-y California Cabernet with an equally rich dinner of grilled steak, baked potato, fresh asparagus and steamed broccoli.
We had our first-of-the-summer outside dinner on our patio. Everything tasted even better eating it outside. It was a big dinner but I was loading up for a long training run scheduled for the next day.
This is one of our “go to” wines that is dependably delicious and decadent every time we open a bottle. Subtle flavors of ripe cherries and vanilla with a smokey finish.
We are currently experiencing distractions, which are keeping us from maintaining our blog. Thank you for your patience. We will be back!
Delicious with lots of complex flavors and bold tannins. Nice finish.
We liked this one.
Served tonight with spaghetti and broccoli and cheesy garlic toast.
This Norton Malbec 2010 is a delicious Mendoza Malbec that is a very good value. I purchased it on my most recent trip to World Market. This beats some recent wines that we have had for twice the cost. Lush and full of berries. Gentle tannins but a robust finish.
We are having this tonight with my delicious poor-man soup which is my original recipe. (If you want my vague [no measurements] recipe, let me know.)
A very wintry Monday night in Michigan. We had lots of snow last night followed by sleet and now more snow. Very pretty, actually! I chose this Concannon California Central Coast Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 to go with our dinner of cube steak casserole, which was delicious.
I like this medium-bodied wine, which Tom bought recently for $7 in our local grocery store. Very cherry on the palate. A bit of vanilla and a lot of oak on the finish. California knows Cabs. . .
Happy Valentines day!
We are having this Cupcake wine for our cupcake of a day! I came home from work today and found a dozen red roses waiting for me and a romantic card. How lucky am I? Very, very. . .
We had opened this wine last night so we finished it tonight. This is an adequate Cabernet, full of fruit (good) but slightly syrupy on the finish (not good). Aside from the finish, however, this is a pleasant quaff for a Monday night.
I stopped at the Plum Market on the way home and bought a slab of salmon which I baked in the oven with a horseradish/mustard/breadcrumbs/butter topping. We had it with a baked potato. Simple, but delicious. I have some homemade apple crisp waiting for dessert.
We have had a couple of very busy weeks and, as a result, our blog has been ignored. Tonight we change that. Tom opened this Peter Lehmann Layers Red 2008 from the Australian Barossa Valley for our dinner of spaghetti casserole and sauteed green beans.
I bought this wine at World Market for $14.99. It is a combination of several different grapes. The result is a somewhat simple red table wine.
However, there are distinct layers of flavors that keep this from being a run-of-the-mill blended wine. I noticed cedar on the nose, raspberries in the mouth and dark chocolate on the finish in this medium-bodied wine. There is a slight syrupy texture that is not my cup of tea. But, in spite of that, this is a good wine.
I am not going to put it on my “buy again” list but, then again, I am not going to waste a drop while we enjoy this bottle!
(We recycled the bottle before we could take a photo, so here’s a cheat shot…!)
This is our second bottle of The Pessimist Cabernet Sauvignon 2009. I bought this, for the second time, at World Market in Ann Arbor. I lke this wine very much. How can you go wrong with a Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon? I am convinced that California produces the best Cabernets and the Paso Robles region never disappoints. This is my kind of wine.
So here we are in the middle of a busy work week. I concocted some spaghetti sauce, simmering in the skillet, and we are reading the paper and decompressing from the day.
This wine is lush and bold. Very delicious and a good choice for our dinner. We have been working the Wall Street Journal crossword puzzle. Does anyone know a five-letter word for “bridge pad” that starts with “i” and ends with “y?”
I was going to finish the dregs from last night’s wine, but Tom insisted that we open a new bottle because I am going out of town tomorrow and, of course, we have to enjoy our last evening together until Saturday. So I chose this William Knuttel Cabernet Sauvignon 2008, which I thought initially was a Napa Valley Cabernet . . . oh boy! I LOVE California Cabernets. But after we opened it and observed the color in the glass and experienced the nose, we knew it was not a pure Cabernet. Sure enough, when reading the “fine print” I discovered this is a blend of Cabernet, Merlot and Cabernet Franc. That doesn’t make it an inferior wine, but it is clearly not what I expected. Still good, but very different. There is a distinctive nose and taste of a blend with Cabernet Franc and we pretty much recognized it immediately. Also, I have to brag about Tom, who correctly determined the year to be 2008 by the color in the glass.
This is a very good mid-week quaff with a rich cherry and plum nose. The taste is cranberry, licorice and tobacco. The finish is lengthy. We are going to have this tonight with some leftovers so instead of a picture of dinner, I decided to post a picture of Trigger in her new red shirt.
Cheers!
