Disappointments and Good Wine

There were a couple of wine disappointments this week--with wine events.  The first was D'Vine Wine's Wine 101 class which I made us reservations for.  Chad called the day before the event to tell us it was cancelled for lack of interest... :-(   So, I thought I'd sign us up for Su Vino's Wine 102 class.  Nope, sold out already!  Su Vino needs a larger space!  Their wines are too good to be limited by that tiny room.

But, wine this week has been a fairly good experience.  Thursday I served steak and had it with New Age, a slightly sparkling Riesling (I think) from Argentina.  This is one of our favorite wines.  We discovered it a couple years ago on our way back from visiting TR's family.  Sitting at the Sacramento airport, we learned our flight was delayed over two hours.  Looking about, I spied a tasting room.  We got two flights, a sparkling flight and a semi-sweet flight, and wound up buying a bottle of the New Age to take home with us.  Low and behold, we then found it here, carried by Market Street and Central Market.

"With a steak?" my purist friends say.  The steak was a mild choice sirloin and the New Age has enough flavor to not be drowned out by it.  They complement each other perfectly.

Last night I served chicken sausages in whole wheat buns with Cheeky Monkey, a pineapple infused grape wine from Su Vino.  On the sweet side of semi-sweet, the wine probably went better with TR's jalapeno sausage that with my much milder sausage, but a good wine is a good wine and the whole wheat bun had enough flavor to help my sausage hold its own.

This morning, as is our tradition usually on Sunday (but tomorrow we are considering going over to the wineries in McKinney), we had wine with our eggs.  We brought with us from our recent travels a case of the Cerise, a sparkling tart cherry wine from Leonard Oaks Estate Winery in Lyndonville, New York.  This winery is about ten minutes away from my brother's place on the Niagara Escarpment.  This is the wine I get my sister, Amy, to send me for Christmas every year.  It has an almost sweet cherry burst followed by a wonderful tart cherry finish and is marvelous for breakfast.