Tom and Melody’s wine blog

Castillo De Olleria Valencia

This Spanish Castillo De Olleria Valencia is made from 75% Bobal and 25% Tempranillo.  This is a delicious red wine. The nose is licorice and the taste is a lovely fruit and spice. In the glass, the color is a lovely deep red. I have a meaty spaghetti sauce simmering in my old, cast iron skillet for dinner tonight. I will also steam some fresh spinach from my garden.

I participated in a golf outing today (a fundraiser for the women’s golf team) and it was a lot of fun. I was called in last minute to complete a foursome. I enjoyed golfing with Bob Conlin and his son Bob and Bob’s wife, Julie. They were so much fun and I hope our paths cross again.

This Castillo De Olleria Valencia 2007 is a wine from Spain that is made from 75% Bobal and 25% Tempranillo. Yum, yum, yum. Delish. The wine is fragrant with cloves on the nose. The taste is fresh and spicy with a crisp finish. I like this very much!

Tomorrow I am taking the day off and will drive to Mackinac Island (with my son, Tommy) to visit my youngest son, Tony, who is working there this summer. It will be a lot of fun to spend time with the boys!

We very much enjoyed this Grevin Cabernet Franc 2006 from our wine club.

It had a fresh-smelling nose of pine and celery and tastes of vanilla and caramel.

We’ve sometimes thought that Cab Franc by itself is a bit much — not enough fruit and not an easy quaff — but we found this Grevin quite nice and quite easily drinkable.

This Argentinian Elsa Bianchi Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 arrived in one of our wine club shipments. I have tasted and blogged about his wine before and I think this is our last bottle. We are celebrating a Friday night, although I am working all weekend (because I am teaching a summer term weekend class).

I like this wine very much. On the nose I detect smoked meat — such as ham. In the mouth, I taste cherries and black dirt. I know I had rated this finish as moderate when I tasted it the first time, but I would have to say it is a rather short finish. Nevertheless, it is a taste that I love and I would purchase this wine again, absolutely.

This morning before work, I assembled a beef roast in the crock pot along with potatoes, carrots and onions. I knew it would be a long day and it is nice to know dinner is ready when we finish reading the paper and having our cocktail. So, I chose this Cabernet to go with our pot roast dinner. Nothing like a good, old-fashioned pot roast to end the work week!

This is our second bottle of this Sangiovese Italian red wine. A medium ruby red in the glass, the nose is a lovely fruit — very delicate and inviting. I like the taste of this wine very much. This has as much to do with the structure as it does the taste. While it is quite dry, it is also softly spicy and fruity. This wine has a somewhat austere, old-world quality to it that is quite wonderful.

We are enjoying this wine at the ideal temperature for red wine — thanks to Tom’s brother and wife, Bob & Suzanne, who gave us a wine refrigerator! Thank you, Bob & Suzanne!

We are enjoying a mid-week cocktail hour this June evening. Both Tommy and Tony are visiting tonight and I have big dinner plans — which includes the grill — and 10 minutes ago the rain was pouring down. I thought I might need to resort to pizza to save my husband from grilling in the rain, but the rain has stopped and the sky is bright once again. Yay!

This Château Lucière Bordeaux 2005 is one of my favorites. I purchased a case of it recently. It is richly flavored, dry, and tannic with a big, lusty finish.

Our son Tommy is a member of The Ben Daniels Band. The band played at The Blind Pig in Ann Arbor last night. It was just fantastic. We were sitting close to the stage and took some pretty good pictures. Tommy plays the bass guitar. Their music is very good and original.

This Rancho Eleora Vineyards Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 came to us via a wine club. I chose it tonight (a Monday) to serve with a delicious dinner that is on the stove. This is our kind of wine in every way. From the moment the black and inky liquid was poured into the glass, we could tell we would love it. The aroma is heavenly with a fresh, spicy fruit on the nose. The taste is absolutely luscious; it is very fruity, but also dry and tannic with a very long and velvety finish. I have a hunch we will finish this bottle and let dinner simmer a bit longer.

For dinner, I brined some chicken before drying and seasoning. Then I browned the chicken in hot olive oil until crispy on all sides. After it was browned, I added cubed, freshly-chopped potatoes and parsley and covered the skillet. It’s been simmering for over an hour and I know the chicken will be off-the-bone tender and the potatoes will be infused with the broth of the chicken. I also harvested some lettuce and green onions from my garden. I will make a salad with that — along with some avocado and yellow peppers. For the salad, I make an oil-and-vinegar dressing consisting of olive oil, red wine vinegar, poupon mustard, horseradish, basil, oregano, savory, thyme, and rosemary. Yummy. Cheers!

We’ve opened this Rancho Eleora Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 to go with shish kabobs on the grill.

It is a very nice, big cabernet, tannic, but also with something of a New-World, big-fruit taste of blackberries and plums. We’re really enjoying this before dinner, and it’s bound to go well with the shish kabobs.

We opened this Vezzani Sangiovese Rubicone 2007 to go with spaghetti tonight.

It has a dark-ruby color, a pleasantly mild but distinctive Sangiovese nose (that certain yeastiness), and a nice dark-berry fruit taste.

This is a great example of an Italian table wine, and it paired beautifully with our spaghetti, spinach, and salad (from our garden). We both loved it.

I am just home from a 7-day business trip in which I had meetings in San Antonio, Austin and Dallas, Texas. The trip was great and I learned a lot, but it is so nice to be home. Tonight, we had a gin & tonic with fresh lime, followed by a glass of this Cascade Canyon Merlot from Washington state. For dinner, we grilled beef kabobs with green and red peppers and red onions along with brown rice and a garden salad. The salad was special because I thinned my lettuce and green onions from my garden and made the salad exclusively from those tender and sweet morsels.

This wine is very fruity. The nose was a bit overpowering at first, but after decanting it mellowed into a fragrant blend of blackberries and blueberries. The taste is heavy with fruit along with a touch of pine. The finish is chocolaty.

It’s nice to be home and to see the spectacular green grass and trees of MIchigan. Texas is so impressive, but MIchigan is home.