A NY Wine, a PA One, and an Old Favorite

Tuesday I served a pork roast, crocked with this marvelous Mexican meat seasoning called Anato Paste.  Jeff and Rose had told me about it and now it is a staple in my cooking.  I wanted a wine that would stand up to the albeit mild flavor of the superb roast and still be crisp and refreshing.  I chose a Niagara Escarpment wine, One Hundred Windows White Wine, from The Winery at Marjim Manor in Appleton, NY.  It is a blend that uses the Niagara grape.  The winery was fun to visit--a huge old manor with a great ghost story (the TV show, Ghost Hunters had a episode there.)   They produce a lot of wines, but we, surprisingly in NY, found only two we were fond of.  We definitely enjoyed wandering about the house, checking out the "hundred windows" the manor is partially known for, and hearing the ghost story.

Thursday, we had steak and I pulled an old favorite to go with it--Funf, a German Riesling that is delicious, light, crisp, and inexpensive (about $6 a bottle.)  We get it at Walmart, but it is also sold at Market Street.  For us, a good crisp German Riesling has no trouble holding its own against a good sirloin.

Last night, I was doing my take on rosemary roast chicken.  I had just gotten back from rehab and was tired.  Our dining room is sunken (though built in 2003, this stupid design trend from the 60's was used--to get to the dining area there is a step down, which means a step up to the kitchen.  To get to the guest room area of the house there is another step down.  That same step repeats to go to the front entry, and to the master bedroom and another to the master bath.  So, getting up in the middle of the night, you have to go up a step to get to the bath and then back down in the bath!--a recipe for disaster.)  I had just brought the dishes to the dining table to set it along with the wine, and had stepped around the table to plug in the wine chiller (a step up and another down to get around the table).  I had my bifocals on, which is bad for judging steps.   Stepping back up to go back around the table, I caught my shoe on the lip of the step and started to stumble.  I might have been able to catch myself, but turning to catch the chair, I fell forward back down the other side of the table and smashed my face into the brick fireplace.  At that point, I was definitely going down.  Now I have a pretty good shiner to sport at the Democratic Party fundraiser I am going to tonight. 
The wine I'd selected was Pink Catawba from the New Hope Winery in Bucks County, PA.  It is a delicious semi-sweet blush produced from the native Catawba grape.  It helped the pain from my fall and even complemented the chicken nicely.