Bits and Bobbles

Posted on December 21, 2008 by Sonadora

First, Tim from Cheap Wine Ratings has the WBW #52 round up posted. (Okay, he has for a few weeks already, but I’m a little slow, and wanted to wait until I had the next WBW news to post!  Looks like some great participation this month (I hosted last December, so I feel for Tim in trying to get people to turn out around the holidays!) and quite a few cheap and cheerful Value Chilean Reds to check out.  You can read the full round up here. wbw-new2

Second, the theme for WBW #53 is up!  Our host this month will be El Jefe over at Twisted Oak.  Jefe has set us to the task of selecting a breakfast wine, with the them “Wine for Breakfast.”  And, the caveats are you can’t go for the obvious-Rose, Sparkling, no dessert wine, nor any mixed wine drink like a Mimosa.  Think outside the box!  Jefe says we can go full out and drink with our breakfast (I think I’ll have to pass…) or have breakfast for dinner!  We love a good omlette for dinner in our house…but we always have a Rose with it!  Send your entry into Jefe by Jan. 14.  You can check out all the details here.

Third!  Press for Wannabe Wino!  I haven’t been able to see this month’s Wine Mutineer Magazine yet, but I hear my blog is in there as a wine blog you should be reading!  Pretty darn cool! I connected with the Wine Mutineer folks at the Wine Blogger Conference on the 2nd night’s dinner (dear lord, people who are my friends, why do you let me talk to the press after I’ve spent the afternoon drinking by the pool??) and gave a short interview about my blog!

And finally, I’m on Wine Biz Radio!  Again, why my friends didn’t stop me from talking to Randy and Kaz DIRECTLY after I’d spent 4+ hours drinking by the pool, I have no idea, but I sound surprisingly coherent (if a bit rambling) and I talk about the blog, Virginia wine and wineries, and the decision made by the VA legislature to strip the right to self distribute from our local wineries. You can listen to the whole episode, which features lots of other GREAT bloggers too, right here.

So, that’s all the news that’s fit to print here!

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Filed under: Wine | 6 Comments »

Dark as Night

Posted on December 21, 2008 by Sonadora

*Disclaimer: I received this wine as a sample from Humanitas so I could participate in Twitter Taste Live.

Up last for the evening of Twitter Taste Live was the 2006 Humanitas Cabernet Sauvignon from Paso Robles.  It clocked in at 14.2% alcohol by volume, had a fake cork closure, and can be purchased for $20.  A word to the wise: While this is an excellent wine, it really needs some time in a decanter. Probably a good two hours or more.  I had our bottle open for about 3 hours before we tasted it, but not decanted, and it really wasn’t opening up.  We stuck the cork in and saved it for the next night, and it definitely did better, but you could tell the flavors were still tight.  So decant, decant, decant!

As the title suggests, this wine showed dark as night in the glass, completely inky, and letting no light through at all!  On the nose I found pepper, orange rind, lilac, berries, black berries, black currants, lots of spice, duty cocoa, earth, forest floor, nutmet, and blueberry. The wine had quite the enticing nose.  In the mouth I got blueberry, blackberry, plum, spice, earth, leather, anise, black cherry, and chocolate.

Overall, the wine had tannins to spare. It would be great with a grilled steak, as the tannins would marry nicely with the fat in the meat.  At $20, this is an excellent value, and could hold its own well against much pricier Cabs.

Filed under: Cabernet Sauvignon, California, Humanitas, Red, Wine | 2 Comments »