Archive | January, 2010

2007 St. Innocent “Shea Vineyard” Pinot Noir: A Great Breakfast Wine

24 Jan

Is it obsessive to, when you are taking a bottle of wine over to a friend’s place, also want to bring a decanter and proper stemware?

Come on, you wouldn’t put regular unleaded in a sports car, right?  Yes, yes, I know that that analogy is flawed, but you get the idea.

Such was the question that plagued me when I was bringing over a bottle of the 2007 St. Innocent “Shea Vineyard” Pinot Noir (from the Willamette Valley, Oregon) ($49.00 at Bell Liquor & Wine Shoppe) for a movie night with a friend.  I asked my roommate whether bringing the decanter and some Burgundy glasses would be too much.

“Um… yeah,” he replied, looking at me like I was crazy.  (Then again, this is the guy who recently ran a 50-mile marathon.)  So I decided not to bring the decanter and the wine glasses, even though the Pinot was almost criminally young.  It was with some trepidation, therefore, that I opened the bottle and poured some into wine glasses the hostess provided.

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California and Californian Wines: the 2007 “Geyserville” and “Lytton Springs” from Ridge

7 Jan

I am writing this post from my plain wooden desk here in DC.  It’s freakin’ cold here, and drafts blow in from the assuredly-closed plate-glass windows to my left, turning my poor feet into blocks of ice.  I’ve been in DC only since around 9 pm on Sunday, and already the healing properties of sunny SoCal rise again as memory in my mind.

I was fortunate enough to have spent the past two and a half weeks in Los Angeles with my family and my sister’s Chihuahua, Twinkie:

Aside from food from Lucky Boy, Taco Bell and various Mexican restaurants of varying degrees of authenticity, endless Chinese, and some delicious, delicious omakase-style sushi at Sushi Sasabune courtesy of my brother, I drank a fair amount of wine (though not as much as I had hoped to).  Of particular note was a bottle of champagne I purchased for New Year’s with my family, a delightful Louis Roederer brut that went well with Peking duck.

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