Okay, I admit it — I am not fond of white wine. Never have been. I went right from Annie Green Springs apple wine to Merlot. Well, not overnight — it took a few years — but until I took my first wine course at UNLV, I avoided white wine. Pink wine, too. When I wrote about the Smith & Wollensky wine lunch (“It’s Wine Week!”), “The Drunken Cyclist” (http://thedrunkencyclist.wordpress.com) suggested I back off the reds a bit and give the whites and pinks a chance: explore more of the lighter side of wine. And you know what? He’s right. Especially now that spring is here! So, Friday night at the American Wine Society wine tasting, I paid close attention to the whites. We started with Thorn Clark Brut Reserve — a lovely, light salmon colored sparkling wine. It didn’t ring my chimes, but I went back and tasted it again at the end,… Read More »
The Irony of White Wine
Now that weather is finally showing signs of cooling down (the thermometer on the patio dropped below 90 last week) I am looking forward to getting back to the red wines I most enjoy. However, last week I’d fixed some shrimp for dinner and suddenly realized I had no white wine — or even a nice dry rose which would go well with shrimp. (How about trying pink wine with pink food like shrimp and salmon? Pink wine — blush, rose — isn’t necessarily sweet. In fact the trend now is a lot more toward dry rose which can be a bit of a shock if you’re expecting something that tastes like white zinfandel! But I digress …) I looked through my rapidly dwindling stock of wine and found two whites — both expensive wines from Daou (www.daouvineyards.com) in Paso Robles. WAY too expensive for me to just glug by myself. So instead I… Read More »
Pinot Noir — really?
This weekend I had some friends over for HH. Here in Las Vegas that used to stand for Howard Hughes. Now it stands for Happy Hour. In my little crowd of friends, HH has become “The only way to fly…” What? You don’t remember those commercials? It was from Pacific Southwest Airlines — the “Proud Bird with the Golden Tail” which showed a cartoon bird of some indeterminate species, comfortably seated on the fuselage, leaning against said ‘golden tail’ with a glass of champagne. If you aren’t old enough to remember those commercials, you probably aren’t old enough to be drinking! But I digress … The question amongst my friends for any given HH always begins with “what wine are we having?” Once we’ve settled on that, the question of food is discussed. So for this weekend’s HH, in honor of my friend Lois’s birthday, I pulled out my very best… Read More »
More on recycling
… so in the recycling bin, there’s an unusual amount of white wine bottles. Normally it’s crammed with reds. I love the hearty reds like zinfandel, syrah and the GSM blends (that would be the Rhone blends: Grenache, Syrah and Mouvedre) but for summer, I want something light and refreshing. Don’t you? Except if you’re having steaks on the barbecue and that calls for a hearty zin or syrah. But I digress … Whites have lots to recommend them. For one thing, as a rule, they are cheaper than reds. (Hurrah!) There are exceptions, of course. One of my favorites is Chemin de Fleurs from Daou Vineyards in Paso Robles. A lovely, refreshing premium wine ($38 or so) with a hint of flowers. And that is for special occasions like my friend Lois’s birthday next week. But for everyday, for just me, I want to keep it reasonable. So, let me tell you what was in… Read More »
