What I served for Thanksgiving

I purchased this Engelheim 2009 last spring during a great sale at Incredible Wine.  I had been saving it for a special occasion.  Generally, I prefer to serve Gewurztraminer with turkey, but in general I like drinking Gewurztraminer so I found myself out.  This was a nice, crisp and apricot riesling, it was a crowd pleaser but was much too sweet for me, even at 13% which is considered very dry.  This wine with a little research appears to be a bit of a knock off.  Ingelheim is a village in the wine region Rheinhessen which is in Germany.  This particular town is know for very 'trocken' or dry wines due to the elevation.  This French Alp wine is really trying to imitate that style.  Unfortunately, no way to tell that on the shelf.   Here is the view of our delicious turkey

I am the 1%

Some Winter Crafty Things

Those of you who know me, know I am absolutely pathetic at any kind of craft, but Pinterest has inspired me to try making this from some of my hundreds of wine corks.  I will post a finished product!

A Snowy Saturday

Last weekend was a Snowy Saturday here on the Front Range, so we took the opportunity to head into the mountains or foothills for a little wine tasting at Creekside Cellars in Evergreen.  Evergreen is a cute little town only about 30 minutes from Denver so its a nice day trip.  Creekside was a decent winery, they had their couple good wines. We purchased the Rosso, blend of red wine, good for almost any food pairing and stands up well on its own.  It was a Sangiovese, Merlot, and Cab blend, the ratio was just right as I hate the use of Merlot by Colorado wineries, but this held up. What I didn't like: liked to make very clear, other Colorado wineries 'don't know what they are doing', etc...As someone who knows most of those winemakers I know thats not true, and that is not the spirit of the colorado wine industry, it is based on competitive support.  Want to see your winery grow? Start recommending, not bashing others, they will return the favor.  I was going to post a picture but we already drank it!  They had a very cute little restaurant there as well that looked like some good eats, we talked about taking our parents there next time they are in town.

Napa Valley and Sonoma 2011

We just returned from an awesome trip in Napa and Sonoma- a wine lover's dream!  We stayed in Napa the whole time, at the Elm House Inn.  This is an amazing time to visit the Napa Valley the vines are dripping with grapes ready for the picking. We visited 15 wineries/vineyards on this trip, which was surprisingly not too many.  We planned on about 3-4 per day but with the availability and proximity of so many wineries, it was easy too squeeze in a few more.  The above picture is the whole family at Jacuzzi Family Winery trying there chocolate port shots.  Loved this winery due to their Italian style winemaking.

Here is a quick rundown of the wineries we visited (Beaulieu Vineyards above):

Day One:  (Napa V.) Beringer Vineyards, Merryvale, Pride Mountain, Charbay and Long Meadow Ranch

Day Two: (Napa V.)  Beaulieu Vineyards, Sequioa Grove, Grgich Hills, Kuleto Estate, and William Harrison

Day Three: (Sonoma) Kunde, Kaz, Gundlach Bundshu, Cline, and Jacuzzi Family

I have very detailed reviews under "winery/vineyard reviews", but would give the briefest reviews in this very technical manner.

Keep: Beringer, Merryvale, Pride Mountain, Grgich Hills, Kaz and Jacuzzi

Toss: Charbay, Long Meadow, William Harrison, Gundlach Bundshu

The best view in the Valley is definitely the Sonoma/Napa county line at the top of Pride Mountain in the Mayacamus Mountains at Pride Mountain Vineyard. 

There are a lot of very famous restaurants in the valley and for the most part I would say they are vastly overrated, I had no idea what little interest I would have in eating after an entire day of wine tasting, but the answer is very little, the best meal we had in Napa Valley was Gott's Roadside Burgers.  Way better than In and Out, delicious secret sauce and great onion rings.  Sacrilegious to some people I am sure, very glad we did not spend the money on Thomas Keller.  For all of the reviews on this trip, see each individual page for detailed reviews.