Wow, is it really almost June? How is it possible that I have not had any sangria yet this season?  Ok, in this country anyway, we definitely had our share of sangria while overseas, but I’m not letting that count…  I have another great Tempranillo to tell you about from our trip to Spain.  It is called “Los Molinos,” it is from Valdepenas, and it cost 2.60 euros.  Yep.  That’s right.  The equivalent of $3.69 US.  Viva Espana!  Was it the best Spanish wine I’d ever tasted?  No.  But was is fruity with a sweet nose, bright cherries on the palate and a smooth finish?  Yes!  Light tannin and soft overall, this is another great wine to sip while snacking on cheese in your hotel room while getting ready to go out for a night on the town.  Come on people, for that price, how could you go wrong?  I just wish our stores would follow in the Corte Ingles’s footsteps and offer cheap wine that is actually palatable.  Ok, ok, Two Buck Chuck and Three Wishes are palatable, but a far cry from the super cheap options in other countries.  Big holiday weekend ahead of us here in the good ‘ole US of A, hope you have a great one and we’ll be back next month!

Hola, amigos!  My, how I’ve missed you all!  But we’re back from vacation and ready to tell you about some of the amazing wines we tried!  As I may have mentioned, we visited England, Scotland and Spain on out recent European vacation.  Now, while we had a great time in England and Scotland, for obvious reasons I am going to focus on our vitacultural endeavors in Espana.  We’ll start with a great little wine produced specifically for the Corte Ingles, a popular department store.  It is called Casa Mayor and it cost 5.35 euro.  That’s $7.62 US.  Yeeaah, I like wine prices in Spain…  But anyways, this wine was just lovely.   Soft, mild tannins, earthy flavor with a subtle nose and a short finish.  Great, basic Rioja perfect for sipping on a patio in the sun on a warm spring day.  Not sure we’d be able to find this exact wine on our side of the pond, but if you are in Spain the Corte Ingles is EVERYWHERE and you should have no trouble hunting down a bottle.  More wines to come soon, salud!

Happy Friday everyone!  Today I want to share with you the much awaited details of my recent organic wine collaboration with my darling friend Nina!  When Nina approached me with the concept of an organic wine tasting I instantly loved the idea.  Why organic you ask?  Well, organic wine is made from grapes grown on organic farms, which means no chemicals, pesticides, herbicides or unnatural flavor enhancements.  It has greater health benefits, it has a reduced environmental impact, and it is delicious!  I had not had a lot of experience with organic wine and felt it was important to better educate myself.   I decided upon Bonterra, Frey and Parducci.  Bonterra and Frey are both organic and Parducci is sustainable.  I felt that even though Parducci didn’t quite fit the mold of what we originally set out to do, it was still created with noble intentions of being green and responsible so decided to let it play.  Now, each winery produces a variety of wines.  I selected the red house blend for all three.  That way the tasting would be more apples-to-apples.  It is hard to compare a Merlot from one winery to a Cab from another, right? They were even all from the same region, Mendocino County, CA!  So with an even playing field we dove into these bad boys and didn’t look back.  Let me tell you, I was impressed!  Here are our reviews:

Bonterra – Merlot (52%), Syrah (22%), Cab Sauv (20%) & Zinafandel (2%) – $10.99/bottle

Light tannin with a somewhat vegetal nose and a combination of stone fruit (from the Cab) and black olive (from the Merlot) on the palate.  A softer wine, didn’t pack as much of a punch as you would expect from a wine dominated by Merlot, Syrah & Cab.  But pleasant and easy to drink, good for sipping on its own.  I thought this was a good wine, but after seeing Bonterra wine all over the place I guess I was expecting more.  Granted, this is a table wine and not one of their pure varietal wines, so you should not expect it to be super well defined.  But of the three this is probably the one I would least likely buy again.

Frey – Carignane, Zinfandel & Syrah – $10.99/bottle

Lovely wine with bright, ripe fruits (from the Zin) and a touch of floral/herbal notes.  A nice hint of anise on the finish, unless you’re paring it with a flavorful food in which case you may not detect it.  Much rounder than the Bonterra, very smooth tannins.  This wine was great!  I had never tried Frey going in to the tasting but I am glad I did.  I would buy this wine again, it is soft and easy to drink.  I would most likely drink it on its own as with food I felt it got a little washed out.

Parducci – Zinfandel (39%), Syrah (26%), Cab Sauv (23%) & Carignane (12%) – $9.99/bottle

Pronounced, bold flavors.  The Zin really shines through, this wine clearly has the most pronounced alcohol of the three.  Paired well with the cheese plate we created, especially the pungent Camambert/Blue hybrid.  Big and beautiful – a wine after my own heart!  This was my favorite of the three.  Really held up against the food we were eating but super smooth and delightful on its own.  Love the Zin characteristics and I think the blend was done very well.  I will be buying this again for sure!  Definitely my favorite of the three.

Wow, it’s Friday already?  Thank GOODNESS.  Not that I am happy that my husband’s birthday week is drawing to a close, for his sake, but that DOES mean my birthday month is that much closer so I guess it’s a win-win (because clearly he’s super excited about my birthday month too, right?  Why does he get a week and I get a month?  He can only put up with my singing to him for a week I guess…  I can put up with my singing MUCH longer!).  But back to the D man’s big day.  We had a great night out with friends over the weekend so when his actual birthday rolled around I decided to cook my husband’s favorite meal at home.  Burgers.  But these were no ordinary burgers – they were organic beef, smoked English cheddar, crispy bacon, caramelized onion and mustard-garlic spread on big crusty boule roll burgers.  Accordingly, no ordinary wine would do.  So I consulted the team at my favorite Whole Foods at Legacy Place and came up with the most amazing pairing – Black Slate.

Black Slate is a 2007 red blend from Porrera, a village in the Priorat region in Catalonia.  The wine is composed of 60% Garnacha (Grenache) and 40% Carignon – we ALL know how I feel about blends…  At the wine master’s suggestion I allowed it to decant in a flat bottom decanter for over an hour before drinking. The result was an incredibly balanced wine with super soft  tannins, full of rich cherry and spice.  It was ridiculously smooth.  Unlike most bottles, we drank this one very, very slowly, sipping long after the burgers were finished.  We didn’t want it to end!  Whole Foods priced this at $24.99 but I was able to grab it for $19.99.  I did a little research and it looks like the average price is right around $22.  So this is not an every day wine, but a great splurge bottle for a special occasion, housewarming, fancy dinner party and so on!  With the big March Babies Birthday Pub Crawl coming up tomorrow I don’t see a lot of wine in my weekend, but I’ll be back soon with some new bottles and maybe some new sangria recipes to get you in the mood for spring!!

Last night we met up with some friends in town for supper.  The reservation wasn’t until 7:30 so we had some time to kill beforehand.  We headed over to Stella, an adorable bar/restaurant in the South End.  All decked out in chic Italian white, this is a great place to hang out and people watch.  We selected a bottle of J. Lohr Gamay.  Kind of random, I know, but you know how I feel about lesser-known varietals.  I couldn’t recall having a 100% Gamay wine before and I was very intrigued by the soft tannin and jammy flavor.  Tons of blackberry and raspberry.  There were strong alcohol notes on the finish (I know, all wines are alcohol, but some have more alcohol essence than others, it’s a real thing in the wine world, I swear!) and overall I really enjoyed the wine.

Well, you know what’s funny?  When I looked up the wine on the J. Lohr website, I discovered that it is actually NOT a Gamay but a Valdiguié!  I hadn’t even heard of the varietal so I didn’t think anything of the fact that it was printed on the label of the wine.  I guess I figured it was something to do with the vineyard.  But anyway, I looked it up and apparently the wine makers thought it was Gamay until U.C. Davis testers determined that it was actually Valdiguié, an even lesser-known varietal with roots in southwest France.  I guess the folks at Stella didn’t get the update, oh well!  Doesn’t change the fact that we really enjoyed the wine.  We also enjoyed the price, only $28 for the bottle!  And, of course, we  enjoyed the fried artichoke hearts in a caper-laden sauce that we nibbled on while we were waiting.  Yum.

We’re gearing up for Battle Magnum here at More than Merlot, just a few more days until we’re ready to begin!  So in the meantime, I want to tell you about my new favorite wine, Evodia Grenache from the Calatayud wine region in Spain.  I first tried this wine when I spotted it at Fresh Market.  For $11.99 this balanced, smooth, and incredibly juicy wine was a great deal.  You know how I fee about grenache/garnacha (like Las Rocas, yuuuum) after all…  So anyway, you can imagine my immense delight when I spotted the same bottle on sale at Whole Foods for only $7.99!  And even better, if you buy 6 or more bottles you get a 10% discount, oh happy day!  This wine has become my new Pinot Noir, light and delicious enough to go with anything and drink any day of the week.  A bit more sweet than a traditional Pinot, but I’ve really been feeling wines that are not so bone dry lately.  So buy it, try it, and love it!  Hope your week is off to a good start, more to come soon!

(photo credit via Sansibar)

So after 2+ hours of shoveling (of which I actually did about 30 minutes myself, in addition to taking out the trash, making coffee and putting lunch together!) I finally made it in to the office today to find it empty.  One other person showed up about an hour ago, so needless to say it’s been pretty quiet.  Not that I mind…  And I also finally have a good wine to tell you about this week!  I saw Li Veli Primonero Salento, an Italian blended red wine, on sale at Whole Foods for $9.99 and decided to grab a bottle.  I made home made spaghetti and meatballs last night (yeah, in the food processor, I put in whole chunks of meat in with bread and herbs and stuff and it made it into meatballs, crazy!) and thought a nice Italian would be the perfect dinner guest.  The wine consists of 50% Primitivo and 50% Negroamaro, two varietals that I had tried before but never in a half and half blend.  Let me tell you, they are on to something here!  Less abrasive than I find some Chianti’s can be, not particularly fruit forward but very soft and subtle.  I’m not always a fan of floral bouquets (I don’t like feeling like I am drinking potpourri) but this wine had pleasant floral notes that complimented the flavor nicely.  I would absolutely recommend this wine, you can pair it with food or drink it on its own, very versatile.  Yeah, new wine WIN!  Thank goodness, I really needed a win after the past few bottles we’ve had this week…  TGI Thursday!!

(photo credit Li Veli)

(Nina’s Mexican Rice)

(Black Bean Soup)

(Bootleg Red + Wine Chill Drops)

Ah, so I cracked open my interesting looking red last night after all…  I also whipped up a couple of fantastic Eating Well recipes, Black Bean Soup & Nina’s Mexican Rice (not my Nina’s rice, some random Nina, but it was good all the same!), click on the links above for the recipes, they were super yummy and quick, too!  The wine, however, was a bit of a disappointment.  I picked up the bottle of Bootleg red because I thought the sleek, faux-leather wrapping was clever.  Als because it was a blend, and I love blends!  The wine consisted of even parts of Primitivo, Montepulciano, Negroamaro, and Uva di Troia.  Like the first two, unfamiliar with the last two.  So at first I was hoping that the rather acidic taste would soften as the wine opened up over time, but not so much.  It was good we were trying the wine with food because this is definitely not a sipping wine.   It got a little better by the second glass, overall I didn’t hate it, but I don’t know if I would buy it again.  Oh well, my streak of loving bottles I buy for the label couldn’t last forever I suppose!  Today has been a rough day, I have a sneaking suspicion that more wine will be had this evening, so hopefully I’ll have more reviews to kick off Friday and a much needed weekend!  Until the next time, ciao, bella!!

Ok, not really, that would mean something bad has happened, right?  Well trust me, all is well in Merlot-land,  apothecaries need not come a’ running…  A little play on words for a nice little wine I discovered, Apothic Red from California.  I found Apothic on sale at Fresh Market for $9.99.  Of course I always pick up a right-priced blend, so I grabbed a bottle of this Syrah, Zinfandel & Merlot mix to try at home.  For three strong varietals, this blend turned out to be much smoother than anticipated, particularly notable was the sweet vanilla on the finish (the fiancé attributed the sweetness to the fact that the wine label described the blend as a “smooth red,” like the last “smooth red” blend we tried…  Are the wine makers onto a new adjective trend of which I am not aware?).  Full bodied and delightful, I would totally grab this bottle to sip on its own after a meal.  I could also see using this in a marinara sauce.  You know that old trick of putting brown sugar in your sauce to neutralize the acid?  I feel like the sugar in this wine could serve a similar purpose.  But that’s just a thought, not science.  If I remember to try this the next time I make sauce I’ll report back on my findings…  Anywho, I enjoyed Apothic Red and I think you will too!  Until the next time, happy-almost-Friday!!

(Inkberry wine with Italian bread and rosemary olive oil)

(Salumi platter that will make your head spin)

Alma, the Italian (and Spanish) word for soul, also the name of the restaurant we just happened upon last night in an effort to check out the new Hingham Beer Works at the Shipyard.  Looking to grab a quick drink after work we tried to squeeze in at the bar at Beer Works but eventually gave up and walked into it’s neighbor, Alma Nove.  This place is going to be a gold mine.  Quality menu items (and unfortunately prices) that are competitive with downtown-Boston without the hassle of driving into the city, Hingham-ites (and of course their neighbors such as ourselves) are going to LOVE Alma Nove.  We started off with a reasonably priced bottle of Inkberry wine, a 50/50 blend of Cab and Shiraz from Central Ranges  Australia.  It was great!  It took a bit to open up, but by the time we were through with our amazing salad of arugula, blue cheese, San Daniela prosciutto and port-soaked figs (DIE – notice we inhaled this and thus no picture) the wine was perfectly balanced.  We then moved on to the salumi platter with italian cured meats, MORE blue cheese, homemade eggplant, tomato and fig tapanades, shaved parmesan and crispy Asiago toasts.  Just dig a hole and tell the wedding diet to lay down and die now, will you?  But we split both apps so there was some portion control going on at least.  Oh, and did I mention out bartender was like the most adorable little man in the world?  Oh my goodness.  The service was great, a tad eager perhaps, but it’s a new place and they need to make a name for themselves!  It’s fun being in an environment where everyone is so excited and seems happy to be there, it’s refreshing!  I will definitely be going back to Alma Nove, next time after pay day so I can dig into their delectable looking entrées…  Salute!