With this months wine party over and done with, mostly, I figure it’s time to talk wine. I don’t consider a wine party officially over until the last of the wine is drunk, drank, drunken… gone. As of today, I have one bottle to go. A half bottle of merlot and a half bottle of Pinot. Better make that ¼ bottle of Pinot. I call it palate motivation, and it adds a certain regalness to my desk. Besides I like the way the light of my monitor reflects through the wine, well did thirty minutes ago. I’m sure the wine party will officially be over sometime Friday… night.
So the wine I want to talk about was actually a wine that want not intended for the wine party. It was just finished at the wine party. It all started on the Thursday. You know how some days are really crappy and the idea of liquid libations start to tickle your senses, much like a sneeze during allergy season in a field of whatever the hell it is that give you allergies. Yeah, Thursday wasn’t like that at all. As far as Thursdays it was rather lovely. I remember there was some sunshine and smog, but low smog.
In route from work I just so happened to be driving by the liquor store. It took driving six blocks in the opposite direction I normally drive, but it was the… scenic route. There are two, three, ten… there are a number of things that I absolutely love in life. Turns out one of them is when you go into your local liquor store and discovering that the Italian wine section has almost doubled since the last time you were there… and I didn’t even know that I loved that until last Thursday.
I knew what I wanted get for the wine party, but, but, but there were so many new ones! Besides wine should always be purchased in pairs, well you should always buy at least two bottles at a time. There are reasons for this. Mainly, it’s the brown bag thing. If you get two bottles you get a bigger bag, almost grocery sized. There’s a bigger sense of purpose, better yet, accomplishment.
But, if you only get one bottle you’re stuck with one of those small bags that wrap around the neck of the bottle. Whenever I walked out of the liquor store with just one bottle I always felt like I needed a hobo jacket and a park bench to sit on. Oh, and if you get two bottles, or more, you always have the option to compare, and then compare, and then compare again.
The first bottle was something tried and true, a lovely Chianti Classico that I have savored on more than one occasion. Then, because there were so many new flavors, most of which I had never even seen before… let alone pronounce. That’s one thing about loving Italian wines, I can describe the label simply enough, but I’ll be buggered if I can tell you what it’s called.
As for how I made this brilliant wine selection. I relied upon a tried and true method of decision making. I used that rhyme, the one about a guy named Moe and he was a meeny, or something. The rhyme ended and my finger was pointing at a bottle of 2007 Castello Monaci Liante Salice Salentino… I have the empty bottle on my desk as I type this to make sure I spell it right. It’s made with Negroamaro (80%) and Malvasia Nera (20%) grapes and Castello Monaci is located near the bucolic town of Salice Salentino in Puglia, or in common English, the “heel” of “Italy’s boot” .
As for my review, I’m going to get very technical and tell you it was “yummy” no, better make the “super yummy”. Everyone that tried it made the Oooo sound. You know, that sound that says, “That just exceeded all my expectations I had for this.” It was only $13US too. There’s a saying about wine (that I just made up), which is, “Never underestimate the flavor of a cheep wine.” Besides, it easy economics, why send $130.00 on one bottle of tasty wine when you can get ten bottles of something that is just as likely to make you say “Oooo, that’s nice!” ten times more.
If you dig red wine, find a bottle of this and enjoy. And if you don’t like red wine… get a bottle of this and send it to me.
Oh, and I also learned if at all possible, always purchase the 2007 Plungerhead Zinfandel before the 2008. The difference is sippingly noticeable, and more so if you actually take a mouthful of the stuff. So to recap, in a Frankenstein monster kind of way, 2007 Goood! 2008 Baaaad. I mean it’s drinkable, just not nearly as drinkable.
You know, I don’t think I’ve yet to ask this, but to you wine drinkers out there, do you have any red recommendations? I’d love to hear them.
Image Sources:
Google Images, key words: wine and PC, Castello Monaci Liante 2007 Salice Salentino, and wine store.
I have recently started to fancy a nice bottle of wine from time to time-spilling its fruity contents onto my tongue- to ravish in the flavors of things such as; grapes, vanilla, cherry and, I believe, strawberryish. I do this, mind you, because the wife was beginning to contact AA counselors due to my frequent dabbling in all things Margarita. I have come to appreciate a Pinot Noir by the name of…hang on…its on the tip end of my tongue…McMurray something or another. I will revisit this soon and update you, if you are not aware of the wine I speak of.
I am no wine aficionado, by any stretch, but I do know a nice taste when applied to my mouthy regions. Unless I am numbed up, but why would I be numb during wine tasting? THAT is the real question here. I figure maybe a nice glass of something wine like after a dental visit, but that would be just silly.
Anyway, next time you visit the ole spirit man I would suggest grabbing a bottle of McMurray, McAurther…dammit, now I have to Google it. One second. Ah ha! MacMurray. The beauty of Google.
http://www.klwines.com/detail.asp?sku=1045260&cid=TPV-Googlebase
Cheers!
Sweet. Thanks Scott. I love a good Pinot Noir. I printed off the link and will be sure to take with with me the next time I head to the liquor store. Actually, where are two fair sized wine stores in the area… liquor/wine laws are a bit odd in Utah. I’ll call the wine stores so see if I can find a bottle for the weekend. Cheers.
2008 may be a bad year in the Northern Hemisphere, but it was great here in South Africa, where good wine has been produced for more than 300 years. Some excellent cabernet sauvignons, pinotages and merlots have been slipping down my throat recently. Do you ever see SA wines over there?
Cheers Duncan! Goats Do Roam. That is the one SA wine I know I have enjoyed, on more than one occasion. I know that I have tried more SA wines, but for some reason Goats Do Roam (GDR) is always the first wine I think of when I think South African wines. This stems from one of the wine party friends. He was introduced to GDR by his major professor while working on his physics degree. As a result, he has been the reoccurring staple for sharing GDR with us from time to time. So yes I do have access to SA wines, sadly it’s always a rather small section. But I do grab one from time to time to try out. I find something immensely delightful about trying wine from all over the world.
You know, reading about wine I realize I’m totally “orc” when it comes to drinking…
I don’t know if it’s because I’m still on my graduation (and after the classes the best thing to do in a terribly hot country like Brazil is to go out and have lots of cold beer in the pub’s area just in front the university) or maybe heavy metal did a mess in my life when I was a teenager (everything that made sense by that time was metal, beer and getting really drunk).
My mother loves wine and she has been trying to give me all kinds of it just to see if I’m gonna like it! But it happens that the ONLY wine I like is the one from the plastic bottle – and it costs only R$ 3,00! Hahahaha! Way cheaper than beer! – And FOR ME it’s very tasty!
Do you like caipirinha? I can send you a “recipe” of the best caipirinha ever – simple but tasty. And if you like it you could write something about it! =D
Hehehe!
The universal truth about wine, if you like it, it’s a good wine. It’s all about you and what tastes good to you. Price doesn’t mean a thing. I remember one of our early wine tasting parties and this one lady invited some chap she’d been seeing only a short while. He decided to buy a $100 bottle of wine for everyone to try, you know, to show off a bit. It was the least enjoy wine of the evening. We didn’t know what it cost. We just knew it was lacking in the tasty factor. Apparently this bruised his ego enough that he didn’t come to any more of our wine parties.
I day if you have found a wine that you love for cheap, well done… and cheers! As for caipirinha… I had to Google it. And no, I have never tried it, but it sounds tasty. Angela (my cutie-baby-sweetie-pie-wifey-pooh) loves limes and caipirinha looks like a drink I’d love to introduce her to. If you have a good recipe please feel free to e-mail it to me. Who knows, it just might be something that I’ll need to write about. 🙂
Thanks Bea
I now have it on my list of wines to go and hunt down, a bottle (or two, or six) of that sounds fantastic. I have always loved Aussie reds, but would heartily recommend pretty much anything coming out of the Margaret River area of Western Australia, have only ever had glorious stuff from there.
Thanks for recommendation on the Margaret River area wines from Australia. I’ve added them to my list. Cheers.
You wanna talk about real wine? I looked after my neighbours cat for a week while he went to Madeira and he brought me back a bottle of Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon! What sort of a deal was that!!