While on the Niagara Escarpment a week ago last Saturday, one of the wineries we went to was Schulze Vineyards and Winery in Burt, NY. I know we bought at least two wines there, one of which was the one we had last night. This is a sweet Catawba wine called Thirty Mile Point.
I served it with plain old hamburgers and a salad. The wine starts sweet, but has a fruity, tart finish. Very refreshing and it made those hamburgers special. The second glass, after supper, was even better. This is how we enjoy our "at home" wines--the first glass adds to the meal, the second glass is delicious after.
The Catawba is a native grape to the northeast and has been used to make wine for a long time (though not as long as the Concord.) Needless to say, we are not "premiere grape" snobs. We enjoy the local grapes we have encountered throughout the US.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Sunday, August 26, 2012
TR's Birthday Dinner
Chris and Julie took us out to Pappadeaux Seafood Restaurant last night. Julie and I shared a bottle of Riesling from Chateau St. Michelle--it won't take long for my reader to catch on that my food wine of choice is Riesling. She and I both had shrimp and scallop skewers and the wine was perfect.
The occasion was TR's birthday. He had a salad and gumbo deliberately saving room for dessert--he had about the largest piece of cheesecake I ever saw!
As if taking us our for dinner wasn't enough, Chris and Julie gave TR an electric wine chiller. We tried it out this morning on our Almond Sparkling that we had with breakfast. (We like, on Sundays, to have breakfast of eggs and sparkling wine.) The wine came out of the refrigerator and I put it into the chiller. The chiller decided it was 75 degrees going in (room temperature)...it could not sense the temperature the wine actually went in at.
It did keep the wine cold throughout the morning, which means it was doing what it was supposed to do. But, two hours later, it was still registering just 55...its target temp for the wine was 45, probably close to the actual temperature that the wine went in at. So, it did what it was supposed to do, but, the only way for it to accurately report the temperature, the wine would have to be room temperature when it goes in, and then it would take a long time to bring it down to optimum temp. So...I keep using the refrigerator.
Wow! Finally, after 5 hours since I set the wine in the chiller, it now reads 49--oops. It is supposed to get to 45! However, it is still every bit as cold as it started out...so, it's ok.
The occasion was TR's birthday. He had a salad and gumbo deliberately saving room for dessert--he had about the largest piece of cheesecake I ever saw!
As if taking us our for dinner wasn't enough, Chris and Julie gave TR an electric wine chiller. We tried it out this morning on our Almond Sparkling that we had with breakfast. (We like, on Sundays, to have breakfast of eggs and sparkling wine.) The wine came out of the refrigerator and I put it into the chiller. The chiller decided it was 75 degrees going in (room temperature)...it could not sense the temperature the wine actually went in at.
It did keep the wine cold throughout the morning, which means it was doing what it was supposed to do. But, two hours later, it was still registering just 55...its target temp for the wine was 45, probably close to the actual temperature that the wine went in at. So, it did what it was supposed to do, but, the only way for it to accurately report the temperature, the wine would have to be room temperature when it goes in, and then it would take a long time to bring it down to optimum temp. So...I keep using the refrigerator.
Wow! Finally, after 5 hours since I set the wine in the chiller, it now reads 49--oops. It is supposed to get to 45! However, it is still every bit as cold as it started out...so, it's ok.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Age Improves With Wine
Anyone who knows us knows we love wine... We drink water, some Coke Zero, and mostly wine. People give us wine as gifts and take us wine-ing. We wine when we travel and we wine when we are home. We wine on the back porch while we read and we wine in the living room while we watch TV. We wine while we eat. We go to wine events and we go wine-tasting both at home and while we travel.
We just returned from a two-week trip in which we wined all the way up through Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio, wined for a day on the Niagara Escarpment, wined a couple days north of Philadelphia, and raced back with over 4 cases of wine. As I think back on the trip, our wine-tasting is a bit of a blur (whose isn't?), so I figure I will tell about the wines we bought and the locations we found them in while we drink them.
On the way home, I got a call from the broker telling me we had a cash contract on my house that was reasonable and I thought nothing could go wrong and the house would be sold by the end of the month. Wrong-o. On Thursday, we were notified that the buyer had changed his mind. No reason given. I'd been avoiding wine with dinner since we got home, because we had had plenty while gone, but I needed to break out a bottle that night. The bottle I broke out and served with our steak was Blueberry wine that we had bought at Lone Star Winery in McKinney. It was a dark red fruit wine, sweet, but not too sweet--not a dessert wine. The second glass (after dinner) was better than the first.
Our wine philosophy is that we like light semi-sweet or semi-dry wines that are okay with foods (we usually have the first glass with dinner), but stand up when dinner is finished and we retire to the living room for the second glass. This is not true when getting wines to go with meals for more people than just the two of us, when we will pair wines with courses. We also love to have meals of just "nachkies" (kind of a combination Yiddish/Mexican term that I made up)--cheese, shrimp, appetisers, and wine. For these, our light, crisp, semi-sweet or semi-dry wines are perfect.
This blog will document our wine adventures and our favorite wineries.
We just returned from a two-week trip in which we wined all the way up through Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio, wined for a day on the Niagara Escarpment, wined a couple days north of Philadelphia, and raced back with over 4 cases of wine. As I think back on the trip, our wine-tasting is a bit of a blur (whose isn't?), so I figure I will tell about the wines we bought and the locations we found them in while we drink them.
On the way home, I got a call from the broker telling me we had a cash contract on my house that was reasonable and I thought nothing could go wrong and the house would be sold by the end of the month. Wrong-o. On Thursday, we were notified that the buyer had changed his mind. No reason given. I'd been avoiding wine with dinner since we got home, because we had had plenty while gone, but I needed to break out a bottle that night. The bottle I broke out and served with our steak was Blueberry wine that we had bought at Lone Star Winery in McKinney. It was a dark red fruit wine, sweet, but not too sweet--not a dessert wine. The second glass (after dinner) was better than the first.
Our wine philosophy is that we like light semi-sweet or semi-dry wines that are okay with foods (we usually have the first glass with dinner), but stand up when dinner is finished and we retire to the living room for the second glass. This is not true when getting wines to go with meals for more people than just the two of us, when we will pair wines with courses. We also love to have meals of just "nachkies" (kind of a combination Yiddish/Mexican term that I made up)--cheese, shrimp, appetisers, and wine. For these, our light, crisp, semi-sweet or semi-dry wines are perfect.
This blog will document our wine adventures and our favorite wineries.
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