Wine Night

The hubs and I have been keeping a particular bottle of wine for a special weekend. By special, I don't mean an anniversary or birthday but a weekend where we have no plans, can start drinking early in the evening so we can enjoy the sunset, and can have enough time to make some food to go well with the wine.

Matthews Estate 2005 Claret:



This wine was described to us as a "big, chewy red" (see my earlier post titled, "The Wines of King County" for details) and I really don't know enough fancy shmancy wine lingo to describe it. It definitely had a full flavour with enough acidity to make your mouth water a little while you held it in your mouth.

I can truly say that I researched high and low for what would go well with this special wine. I know what you're thinking, "easy, some cheese and crusty french bread!" Well yeah, but what if we don't eat wheat or cow products? "Ohhhhh... well that makes a big difference!"

The one with the black wax (?) is manchego, and the one that is diced finely is the pecorino romano.



Have no fear, we found 2 sheep's milk cheeses: pecorino romano, and manchego. Here was our menu for our much anticipated night with Matthews Estate 2005 Claret:

Tomatoes with olive oil and fresh basil atop slices of manchego cheese
Grilled portabello mushrooms and red bell peppers
Rice pasta in olive oil with garlic, olive tapenade, and pecorino romano.



The tomatoes should be self explanatory! We used 2 medium sized vine-ripened ones.

For the grilled mushrooms and bell peppers, I brushed them with olive oil, seasoned them with salt, and sprinkled a bit of balsamic vinegar on them. We used them on the George Foreman because our BBQ wasn't working (boo!) so if you can BBQ them, do it until all the liquid evaporates from the mushrooms.

For the pasta, it didn't quite work as planned. We used rice spaghetti and the water we cooked it in got really sludgy, and so the spaghetti was pretty sludgy. I rinsed it with cold water to wash the sludge off but now the pasta was cold! The idea was for the hot pasta to warm the olive tapenade and melt the pecorino romano a little. Not ours. It just sat there looking cold so I threw it in a frying pan to heat it up a bit. After it heated up, it was delicious!

If you're using wheat pasta, you won't have this problem so cook as much pasta as you need, drain and while still hot, toss it with olive oil, a few tablespoons of olive tapenade, and as much or as little pecorino romano (or similar cheese like parmesan) and let stand for a few minutes while the cheese softens and melts.

Of all out dishes, I though the tomato/fresh basil/manchego went best with the Claret, but the Hubs thought the pasta paired best.

Sorry for the unspecific quantities for the dishes, but just keep tasting adn testing until you get the level of saltiness you like!

The Wines of King County

Who knew? Wineries (or satellite wine shops, I believe they're called) just a few minutes drive outside of Seattle!

The husband and I were hosting from out-of-town friends who somehow brought sun-filled, warm days with them from Minnesota (love them!) and we somehow ended up going wine tasting. It wasn't necessarily planned but somehow, someone threw out the idea, the husband googled, and on a Monday morning, we were bound for Woodinville to visit some well-known wineries, and some less-known (well, at least to us.)


For our first stop, we chose Chateau Ste Michelle. We've had quite a few of their wines before and liked their Indian Wells labels quite a bit. The grounds are well-manicured and the gift-shop was really nice, too. I don't want to give away too much about the tour other than to say it's free and you get a free tasting at the end. You can pay a bit more to taste their Indian Wells label but considering you can buy these labels at Safeway (and sometimes they're on sale), this didn't seem worth it. To taste their vintage reserve wines, you have to make an appointment. Overall, I liked the CSM tour and the Chateau provides a really nice "vineyard" atmosphere. There are picnic tables on the grounds, too! We bought some BBQ at a restaurant nearby and had our own little picnic there.

Next, we went across the street to Columbia Valley Winery. It was under construction so the ambiance was lacking. The woman at the counter was really helpful and friendly. Actually, everyone was very cheerful and welcoming. It created a comfortable, un-intimidating atmosphere for asking questions. They didn't have a "tour" per se but you could pay something like $5 for a few different wines. I don't think the hubs was very impressed with any of them but just a matter of taste.



We got in the car (after drinking lots of water, eating , and releasing fluids :) and drove around the corner to Januik Winery / Novelty Hill Winery. The building is very lofty with high ceilings and big windows, that kind of thing. Again, the woman at the counter gave us some great recommendations for the wines, and some of the other wineries in the area.



"Big, chewy reds" is how the woman at Januik/Novelty described Matthews Estate. The "Estate" looked like a temporary construction office. Inside, there are some handsome bottles of reds nestled in cool wooden boxes. The reds were definitely big and chewy. Hubs was very impressed and bought a bottle of claret. No pic of Matthews Estate wine shop because the shop itself was really not very impressive.

Next off, another recommendation by the "big, chewy reds" woman was Brian Carter Cellars. Again, the woman there was super-friendly. At this point, I think I was just plain"happy" and not really paying attention to the wine.


Final stop, as per the recommendation of the Brian Carter, was Bookwalter Winery. It looked like a car garage (in a cool way) and was decorated nicely. I was still quite "happy" from all the tastings to pay attention to the wine. We did buy one bottle wine but I think the cork was contaminated.

Outside the wineshop (used to be an annex to an old schoolhouse?) Note the car-garage like doors as we conferred about the wines...


All in all, it was a summer-like day in early April. With our good friends, we spent the day laughing, chatting and relaxing. I had to say goodbye to our friends the next day. It was the perfect way to end a fun week with them.

Red House Beer & Wine Shoppe

When in Renton... or even if you're not in Renton why not stop off at the Red House Beer & Wine Shoppe? www.redhousebeerandwine.com

The husband took me here for a belated birthday dinner and it was fantastic. Actually, fantastic is an understatement! He went in a day or two before and spoke to the manager about setting up a special dinner for moi. The husband likes to make special occasions even more special but this surprised me; he pre-selected our dinner!

Just for background: We love food, think about it it way too much, eat way too much of it, and basically love pouring over menus and restaurant websites. We could have easily spent an hour looking the menu over trying to combine the shared dishes and entrees, with several glasses of red and white. When he went to the restaurant, he picked out dishes I would like (and he was bang-on) and the manager selected wines that would compliment each dish!

Husband was a bit worried that I would have wanted to eat something else, or be kind of offended like, "what, you don't think I can pick my own food?" but it was perfect.

Red House was pretty empty (it was a Monday night) and we pretty much had the top floor to ourselves.

Here's what we ordered (the manager (who had Monday off) kindly threw in a few extras! :)

House Salad
Pear & Gorgonzola Salad
Roasted beets
Devil Shrimp (spicy!)
Beer glazed mushrooms (delicious!)
Steamed clams (huge portion!)
Grilled pacific salmon
Cioppino

The servings were pretty generous and with the "extras" the manager threw in for us, we were stuffed before the entrees came out. We were able to squeeze in a few bites of salmon and maybe 2 sips of the Cioppino broth before was admitted defeat. We got it all packed to go, along with a dessert sampler, too!

I can say with confidence that everything we ordered except for the salmon and Cioppino were excellent. Because we got the latter 2 items to go, we ended up heating them up the next day for lunch. Needless to say, all the lovely seafood in the Cioppino was slightly overcooked by then. Same goes for the salmon. The both seemed to be seasoned very well (espeically the Cioppino broth which was delicious!). I really hope we can go back again so I can actually have the entrees as they were meant to be.

Oh, we did go back a few days later but just for a snack and a glass of white :) We had the crabcakes (SOOOO good) and pomme frites with truffle oil (also yum).

The wines that stand out are:

New Age (Argentina frizzante Sauvignion blanc - matched really well with the salads)
Jakob Demmer (Germany Reisling - amazing with the crab cakes)

I can't wait to try more stuff here... like the polenta fries... and the paella... Oh, did I mention how reasonable the prices are? The same meal in Seattle would have cost double, easily. Because they are a wine store, you can order a bottle from the store and pay a $5 corkage fee. Same goes with beer except the fee is $1.50.

As if this place weren't awesome enough, they do a wine and food pairing thing on Wednesday nights at 6pm for something like $20. I believe that gets you maybe 3 glasses fo wine and some food. I haven't been yet (I'm only ever in Renton on weekends) but hope I can miss a few days of work to take time off to go there.

Thanks for a wonderful birthday dinner, Red House!

Wine Party Recap

The wine tasting went really well in my mind. I only hope everyone else had a good time, too.
It was a blind tasting so we had 5 bottles wearing paperbag "shirts" thanks to the talented Dylan. It was bit tiring because I had to rinse out everyone's glass and then pour the next wine, and doing that 11 times is not fun.

An alternative: Maybe next time I'll pour all the wines into a carafe or decanter and number the container, and mark the glasses with a dry-erase marker. That might make for easier and less messy pouring.

Another alternative: Pre-cut cheeses so people can quickly grab the cheese that best compliments the wine.

The next alternative after that: Have three pitchers full of water and three empty pitchers and place them around the room (1 full and 1 empty at each place) so people can easily rinse out their glasses and move onto the next wine. I think there was a lot of waiting around and that might have been boring for some people.

The faves: Rioja Crianza 2005 Tempranillo Campo Viejo got some good responses. I believe most found it to be an easy-going wine that wasn't too intense.

Wolf Blass 2006 Shiraz had a good length of flavour.

Smoking Loon 2006 Old Vine Zinfandel was another good one.

I don't think any of them scored very badly. Most people found something they liked and at the end of the evening, all bottles were empty which is always a good sign :)

The best part of the evening was seeing everyone drinking and eating together. Corny as it may sound, having good food with good wine and good friends is one of the finest pleasures in life. (Cue the throwing of the cheese...)

Some cheese with your wine?

Over the last few days I've been all over town (well, my side of town) gathering together stuff for the wine party which is in 2 days. 6 kinds of cheese for 5-6 kinds of wine for 8-10 people. Hope it's enough!



Clockwise from top: Brie, Havarti, Black Goat's cheese (?), Cambozola, Balderson's aged cheddar, Jarlsberg

I'm really excited for the black goat's milk cheese:

Yup, aged 2 years! Old stuff...

This party is going to be a blind tasting. The bottles will be covered up with paper bags and guests will use their senses to come to an opinion about the wine. I wrote down a few of the characteristics of each wine so we'll know what to smell/taste for. Here's a score sheet I made:

It's fairly straight forward, just jot down what you smell, taste, etc., then rate it out of 5 wine glasses. It might seem kind of school-ish but in a fun way! (Or maybe it's just fun for me?)