Good day to you all!  My, I have an interesting wine to share with you today…  At no ones suggestion in particular, this weekend I picked up a bottle of Kelley Creek 2005 Merlot as part of a 3 for $25 deal.  I didn’t think we had tried the bottle before and I thought it was worth a shot.  Well, we opened it last night to use/pair with a beef stew we were whipping up to try to warm ourselves from the -2 degree temperature (Why, Boston?  Why??) and had quite a time even just opening the bottle!  Normally I am an advocate for synthetic rubber corks but this one was nearly impossible to remove from the bottle.  Moving on to the nose.  I suppose most professionals would describe it as tinny or canned vegetable.  I thought it smelled like olives.  Green olives in a dirty martini to be exact.  Great if you are drinking a dirty martini, somewhat off putting if you are smelling a red wine.  The taste also echoed the olive-ness, it wasn’t bad, just a little odd…  It worked fine in the stew so that is good, and after a glass I didn’t really mind the vegetal quality any more.  But then we got to the end and I lost a good inch of my glass to an enormous amount of sediment.  Yes, with a 2005 bottle I should have expected or at least checked for sediment so it is no ones fault but my own, but it was still annoying.  Normally I don’t like to put negative reviews on my blog as no one likes a Negative Nancy, but I thought I would share this one because it is not entirely negative.  Like I said, I was able to get to the end of the bottle rather easily, despite the strange nose/flavor combo.  And I think there would be some people out there who would really go for this wine, people who like dirty martinis perhaps, or admire the vegetal profile.  So I share it with you just in case.  Speaking of case, we just sold some old furniture last night and now have a couple hundred in cash lying around the house.  Should we put it towards the bill for the new furniture purchased or towards a mixed case of some new fun wines?  We are getting ANOTHER snow storm tomorrow and we DO have dinner plans with a couple of our wonderful couple friends this week, so I think having some good wine on hand is a MUST.  Besides, it’s RESEARCH, right??  :)

(photo credit Kelley Creek)