Turkey Wines in the Wino House

Posted on November 27, 2013 by Sonadora

What to drink with the ubiquitous turkey?

Year in and year out people beseech me with requests for the perfect pairing for your Thanksgiving meal. Not to mention the thousands of pitches I receive from wineries and PR folks claiming to have the best, most excellent ever, wine for your holiday feast.  Let’s get this out of the way: No perfect wine for Thanksgiving exists. Thanksgiving offers sweet, savory, sticky, dry, creamy, and a dozen other food adjectives, dishes. You would be asking for a miracle for something that goes well with both sweet potato marshmallow casserole and cranberry sauce (nothing goes with cranberry sauce).  With that said, I’ll tell you what I purchased/am pulling from the cellar for the feast in the Wannabe Wino household. Take that for what you will.

4 bottles of assorted sparkling – Prosecco, Cremant de Alsace, Champagne, and Brut from CA.

2 bottles of Chablis. I went to lunch last week with the folks from Pure Chablis (more on that later) and fell in love.

2 bottles of Gruner Veltliner. A family tradition.

1 bottle of Napa Sauvignon Blanc.

1 bottle of Sancerre.

4 bottles of Pinot Noir. All from the US, various appellations.

2 bottles of Cabernet Franc. One from Maryland and one from VA. Gotta represent locally.

Various local hard dry apple ciders.

Who wants to come over? Gobble gobble.

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Filed under: Thanksgiving, Wine | 4 Comments »

7 Year Itch

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Sonadora

Seven years ago today I hit “publish” on my first post on Wannabe Wino. I did not know at the time how much the wine blogging and wine community in general would come to be a part of my life. I’ve made life-long friends through this endeavor, found my community, and have tasted more wine than I ever thought possible.

When I hit publish on this post, it will be post number 1491. 1491. Not even a fraction of the wines I’ve tasted in that time given I long ago gave up trying to write about every single wine I tasted. I’ve been to Portugal, Canada, various US wine regions, and attended 5 out of 6 annual Wine Blogger Conferences.

Thanks for reading for all these years and here’s to 7 more! (Maybe?)

Cheers!

 

Filed under: Blogs, Misc | 2 Comments »

Try Rose With Your Turkey

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Sonadora

*Disclaimer: I received this wine as a sample from F. Wildman.

Drink. Drank. Drunk. I’ve been kicking into high gear with a box of roses lately with my eye on the rapidly approaching Thanksgiving holiday. Wine is generally not the main star of my Thanksgiving meal, but I certainly don’t want a wine that’s going to totally clash or dominate the meal either. (Stuffing is the star of my Thanksgiving meal.) I often turn to rose as a refreshing choice with enough acidity to get past the sometimes heavy food. With that in mind, I pulled the 2012 Finca La Linda Malbec Rose from the basement. The wine sports a screw cap closure, clocks in at 13.5% alcohol by volume, and retails for about $10.

Four takeaways from this wine:

1.) It must be the Malbec grapes, this was a substantial and bold rose.

2.) The key to Thanksgiving rose is making sure to pick on that isn’t sweet. The Finca is certainly a dry rose.

3.) The acid on the rose held this one together and would do well against stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole (do people still make that?), rolls, sweet potato casserole, with marshmallows of course…the turkey doesn’t matter since it’s really just a vehicle for delivering stuffing and gravy into your mouth.

4.) Rose isn’t just for the summer!

On the nose of the wine I found meat, cherry, strawberry, and spice. The meat note stood out for me, I don’t usually find that in a rose. In the mouth I got more cherry, strawberry, and citrus notes.  Overall the wine was bold, a bit spicy, and had good acidity.

 

Filed under: Rose, Wine | 3 Comments »