Entries tagged with ‘michelle’:
Two wines from Michelle
This weekend, Katie’s friends from Oakland ame over for dinner. They brought the wine, and I cooked. I realize that I’m not really good at this whole “food porn” thing (since I totally forgot to take pictures… some photographer I am!), so describing it will have to suffice. The menu was as follows:
- A simple butter lettuce salad with goat cheese, toasted walnuts, red grapes, and a champagne vinaigrette
- Grilled rib-eye steak with a cabernet and wild mushroom reduction
- Roughly mashed fingerling potatoes with fresh rosemary and dill from the garden
- Sweet white corn on the cob
There were plans for dessert to be fresh berries from the market drizzled with honey and served atop vanilla ice cream… but that just didn’t happen.
The wine Michelle brought was great though:
Benziger 2004 “Oonapais” Sonoma Mountain Red
I really liked this wine. A couple of things before the tasting… First, I’m very intrigued by the whole biodynamic thing that Benziger is doing… it’s pretty far out stuff.
Secondly, the packaging of these wines was done very nicely. From the recycled textured paper used for the label, to the printing on the cork, their designer is paying attention to detail and doing a really good job.
Anyway… on to the wine… This is a really big, full-bodied wine. Some nice soft hints of blackberry and cassis up front, then lots and lots of asian spice, black pepper, white pepper, and bell pepper—it is seriouslyspicy! A nice long finish rounds out a really lovely wine. Very nice.
Ledson 2005 Monterey Orange Muscat
This was also a really nice effort. Not too sweet, but still thick and viscous, with hints of melon and honey. A surprising amount of structure, and a really interesting velvety finish. Just outstanding.
According to Michelle, this was the saving grace of her tasting there. Everything else was pretty “eh”, while this one rocked the house.