Wannabe Wino Wine Blog

I must confess. With being sick and out of wine commission for a week+ I lost track of days.  Then we had company and traveled a few times for family events and all sense of when the next Wine Blogging Wednesday was set for escaped me.  Our host this month is Katie over at Gonzo Gastronomy.  She tasked us with marrying our bottles of wine with music…though she encouraged no Michael Buble. Katie really wanted us to sit with our wine and try it with several different kinds of music, noting how our interaction and experience changed as we alternated the music. You can check out all the details here.

Now, I have nothing against music, and very clearly nothing against wine.  But what I do have is a clear lack of time.  I do most of my weekly blog prep on Sundays.  We simply get home too late for me to really have time to compose a coherent (give me a little leeway here, I like to pretend I’m coherent…) wine blog post.  Really, it’s either eat or write…I have my priorities in order here…at times.  Most of my music listening happens in the car to and from work (drinking wine completely discouraged) or running on the Mall…I think drinking on federal land in public might also be highly discouraged, or illegal.

So Monday evening was really the first non-sick, non-traveling day I have had since the latest WBW theme appeared on May 22.  That said, I didn’t have time to listen to multiple albums and record my thoughts on the wine as I listened to music across the spectrum.  Last week I was tweeting with Silene’s Cellar and Stoc about Tori Amos.  Now, I haven’t heard her new record, but I’ve always dug her classic stuff and probably saw her 4 or 5 times live back in the day.  She stuck in my mind, and I loaded her Little Earthquakes album onto the top of my play list and rocked out like it was 1992 and I was still an angst ridden teenager (ok, joking here, I was never really a typical teenager…I preferred Billy Joel to the Back Street Boys and other assorted things that put me out of the “normal” realm).

Tori Amos to me has also been a little on the dark side…and brooding.  She struck me as almost a Cabernet Sauvignon type lady, but with a little lighter humorous edge.  So I chose a Cabernet Sauvignon based blend instead…the 2002 Twisted Oak Murgatroyd.  “And if I die today I’ll be the happy phantom And I’ll go chasin’ the nuns out in the yard And I’ll run naked through the streets without my mask on…”
It’s sometimes dark, sometimes playful, and almost always makes me smile…which I think explains my relationship with wine fairly well too.  Wine can be serious, it can be easy, it can be thought provoking…but overall, it’s fun and it puts a big ol’ grin on my face.  When an old skool Tori Amos track comes up on my iPod…I sing along.  Out loud.  On the streets…or while I’m running on the Mall.  It makes me happy and I feel like dancing.  I remember good times with my best childhood friends with Tori….with wine, I remember great times with my friends from my adult years and with my husband.  They parallel well to me.

The 2002 Twisted Oak Murgatroyd had a real cork closure…I purchased it from the winery…I want to say it ran me around $20 a bottle, but I can’t remember and I didn’t write it down.  The neck had a TON of sediment in it…I’d recommend a quick decant just to rid the bottle of that.  Really, I was flabbergasted by what had collected in the neck!

On the nose I found spice, mulberry, toasty oak, cinnamon, blackberries, black currants, slight chocolate, and violets.  It smelled like mulled cider and tasted like Christmas.   In the mouth I got tart fruit that seemed much more red than the nose.  Red berries, red currants, earthy spice, mulberry, cranberry, cinnamon, and spice.  This is ready to drink….I say drink up now…I have 4 more bottles and I think they’ll be best within the year…the wine is smooth, integrated, and the fruit is showing really well.

I’m not sure I captured the essence of this theme…but I tried my best, and stepped out of my element…I don’t usually listen to music intentionally or intently while sipping on my wine.  So this gave me a chance to sit back and relax…well, as much as I could given getting home after a long freaking day!  Many thanks to Katie for hosting and per usual, a tip of my virtual cap to Lenn of Lenndevours, our fearless leader.

Filed under: California, Red, Twisted Oak, WBW, Wine |