Tonight’s dinner and wine!

Posted on November 14, 2006 by Sonadora

The dinner was a lemon-herb chicken sauteed in fresh lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil that we got at Hop Kiln Winery and I am sad to say is now an empty bottle, and fresh rosemary. Green beans and biscuits with honey (yes, Pillsbury, I can’t do everything yet!).

I normally think of white when I make poultry. Though I have heard the pinot noir is excellent for turkey and I will be offering a bottle on my Thanksgiving menu (more on T-day choices later). I decided to go with my first thought and pick a white. Since it was a really light sauce on the chicken and lemony, I decided a riesling would be a fair match.

This riesling came from our search for everyday wine. It’s a 2005 Matheus Piesporter Goldtropfchen Riesling Kabinett. German if you couldn’t tell. Most of what I can find about this wine online is written in German, which isn’t much help to me. We paid $14.99 for this bottle, but I found it for $12.95 here

Screw-cap closure, 10.5% alcohol by volume. A nice light wine for a nice light meal. However, the screw-cap was nearly impossible to open. We had to use a knife to cut around it in order to remove it. I smelled mostly honey flavors when I poured this bottle. Tasted like honey as well, with just a slight citrus/acidic note. It paired excellently with the lemon chicken and was very tasty to finish up after dinner.

Well done to the sales people at Unwined for selecting this for us. At the price and with these flavors, which my husband really loved, it will make a regular appearance at our table. Also, the low alcohol content makes this perfect in my opinion for a weekday wine….I can enjoy it and not worry about feeling any ill-effects.

Filed under: Everyday Wine, German, Riesling, Unwined, White | Comments Off on Tonight’s dinner and wine!

Our quest for everyday wines

Posted on November 14, 2006 by Sonadora

We bought a lot of wine while in the Sonoma area this summer. And by a lot I mean around 200 bottles. Now, not only has the storage of such a quantity been a challenge given that we live in an apartment, but many of the bottles cost more than we like to drink as a regular weekday wine. If we actually lived in Sonoma and didn’t have to ship, it might be an option to drink more of it regularly. So we are currently searrching and tasting to find more affordable options in all categories to drink with dinner most nights.

Our search led us to Unwined a local wine shop I read about on Virginia Vine Spot

We picked up 6 bottles and have tasted our way through 3 so far. The first two weren’t worth mentioning, except for the point of interest that one was a Vihno Verde from Portugal. I had never seen anything like it before and had to try it. For $7.99, it was worth it just for the experience. Vihno verde literally means green wine, but this bottle was completely clear in color. I gather that it’s generally a sparkling wine, but I would say it’s a lot less fizzy than any other sparkling wine I’ve ever had. Ours was Gatao Vihno Verde. I can’t say I was disappointed since I didn’t know what to expect, but this was an almost flavorless, slightly fizzy (think sparkling table water), lemony gingerale type of drink. I wouldn’t rush to buy it again, but might consider trying a different brand. If unique wines are your thing, give it a go for the novelty.

In the interest of not writing novels, I’ll put my notes from tonight’s wine in a new post.

Filed under: Portugal, Sparkling wine, Unwined, Vihno Verde, Virginia Vine Spot, White | 4 Comments »