Tasting Notes From the 1st Weekend of April

I've got a lot of catching up to do. We had quite a few different wines over the weekend and I somehow wasn't able to find the time to blog about any of them yet. I must admit, after all the various wines over the past few days, my notes are a bit fuzzy, so I may be brief on a few of these.

First a quick shout out. Apparently our friends who brought the Colorado wine over weren't thrilled with my review, so they decided to make up for it by bringing all kinds of good wine over this weekend. Here we go....first up a Stonehedge Reserve Zinfandel from Mendocino, CA (retails around $17.99). This was a good wine, especially if you don't want an overpowering Zinfandel. It had just a hint of spice to it, but a lot of nice blackberry and other fruit flavors. I would say give it a try, but before you do you may want to check out their $10 Cabernet which is really good itself.

Next we opened a bottled of 2005 Harlow Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon. Everyone was very pleased with this wine (I believe it retails for under $10). I don't remember much about the nose on it, but the flavors were gentle, fruity and finished with just the right amount of tannins. Both of these wines however were just warm ups for the real show stopper of the night.



Our friends had been saving a bottle of 2002 Stag's Leap Merlot from Napa Valley. If you aren't familiar with Stag's Leap, let me take a little diversion here. The winery has been around for over 100 years and is one of Napa's most famous and prestigious wineries. They are probably best known for producing the Cabernet Sauvignon that won the 1976 Judgement of Paris blind taste test between French and California wines. If you haven't seen it, there is a very entertaining movie just out on DVD called Bottleshock which is based on this event - while not totally accurate (what movie is) I highly recommend the movie! But back to the 2002 Merlot. Simply an incredible wine. Perhaps here is the best way to sum this up - my friend kept saying "I don't like Merlots so I'm not sure I'm going to like this". To which I replied, trust me, a good Merlot tastes nothing like the junk that has been over produced lately, and much more like a good Cabernet which I know you like. After one sip he was amazed. On the nose I got strong floral aromas, like wildflowers, mixed in with pear and other tree fruit. The best part was the taste in the back of your tongue and the texture as it went down. Simply one of the smoothest wines I have had. This wine can be found in the $30's and at that price is an excellent example of what a Merlot should be - go find some right away. Thank you to our friends for brining this over, and thank you for reading - enjoy the first miracle.

Weekend Wine Tasting Notes - Catch-up #3

So this last weekend tasting note is a bit tough for me to do, given that it's a review of a wine I made - the 2008 FetZin. It's tough because if I'm too positive about it you could obviously say I'm biased, but if I'm too negative you could say I'm being modest, so I'll just do my best to give my honest opinion. My honest opinion is I love this wine. The background is - I wanted to start testing my wine making skills so this past fall I purchased some grapes through a local fruit distributor. I bought about 70 lbs of Zinfandel and 70 lbs of Cabernet Sauvignon. Both varieties came from Lodi, CA. The Zinfandel grapes were beautiful. Dark colored, full clusters and very firm. (The Cabernet's were not so hot but we'll discuss them later). I bottled this Zin about a month ago and was pretty excited about it at the time, I believe it's only gotten better over this first month in the bottle. First thing I'll say about it is even though there is no residual sugar (it has a fairly high alcohol content of 15%) it almost tastes sweet in your mouth. The nose on the wine is vanilla, oak and cherry. When I taste it my thoughts are black cherry, chocolate, blackberry, and vanilla. One of our guests who tried it called out another flavor that I totally agreed with - fig. This is a wine that is almost perfect either by itself or with a desert. Not sure I'd recommend it with a meal, unless it was something really spicy. The flavor is "sweet" enough for someone who doesn't typically drink reds to enjoy, but it's also a "big" red wine so the red wine fans will also really like it. When my wife and I first tried it her first comment was this tastes just like the Rombauer Zinfandel we had in Napa (Rombauer was a great Zin that retails in the $30's). I'll sum it up by saying I'm very excited and pleased by my first real wine production. Unfortunately the 70 lbs of grapes only produced a little over a case of the wine. I want as many honest opinions on this wine that I can get, so if you're interested and we're getting together, let me know I would love to share the Zin with you. That's all for now, enjoy the first miracle!