Because Life is Too Short to Drink Bad Wine

Sinus infections vs. wine

Just a short note for my faithful reader, I've been laid low by a sinus infection and couldn't really appreciate wine recently (that's not to say I wasn't drinking it, just wasn't tasting it). Now that's it cleared up, we're heading to a tasting event tomorrow night at our favorite wine bar, I'll be sure to take plenty of notes.

Wine and Credit Cards Do Not Mix

Last Friday, Monique and I decided to have a quiet (and cheap) evening by going to one of our local wine bars/clubs, Grand Tastings, and "tasting"* this month's club selections, and picking up our wine. That's four wines, two reds and two whites for the tasting, then one of each to bring home. I thought it would've been enough. Apparently, I don't know me very well.

After we finished off our club tastings, we decided to check out the regular tasting menu for that night. Just to see if there was anything we wanted to try. What a surprise, there was! So five more "tastings" later and we had narrowed down the wines we wanted to buy, in addition to our club selections, to two whites, one red, and a small  bottle of red ice wine. We were the last customers to leave, and figured we should just head home.

But wait! Another great wine bar, Vino 100, is on the way home! So we decided to stop in there and just browse for a bit. And by "browse" I mean "buy a mixed case".

And with that, our quiet (and cheap) night out turned into an opportunity to drop a few hundred bucks into the local economy and simultaneously to bring home enough wine that our already-almost-full racks now have an overflow growing in the utility room. I swear, when we finally buy our house in the near future, the guest bedroom's closet is becoming a wine cellar!

Overall (for the evening, tasting notes will follow):

* The folks at Grand Tastings are fairly generous with their tasting pours. A one once tasting usually weighs in closer to three or four ounces early in the evening, and can get to be a full glass closer to close.

A new favorite

 Monique and I are members of several wine clubs, both local in Dallas and mail order. One that continues to impress us is our Wine Shop at Home membership. They seem to go out of their way to find little boutique wineries in California that we've never heard of. Our latest shipment contained a Sauvignon Blanc that has become one of our newest favorites.

Laughing Raven is a small winery in the Anderson Valley. Given that some of the most expensive grapes in California come from the Anderson Valley, it's no surprise that this one is excellent. What is surprising is that's it's under $15 a bottle!

Drinking this wine is like driving up the Pacific Coast Highway in a convertible in August. Just put the top down, listen to the waves hitting the shore to your left and an Eagles CD in the speakers, and head off! That's one of the things I miss most since moving to Texas from California, and now that I've found it in a bottle I know I'll stock up a few cases. Just to make sure I always remember it.

Overall:

Wine in McKinney? Really?

After leaving Frisco and Crossroads Winery, Monique, our friend L., her friend C., and I headed out for our next destination in North Texas wine country: Carmela Winery in Prosper, TX.

Prosper is a very small town north of Frisco. We almost missed the entire town when we didn't exit state highway 389 in time! Unfortunately, our adventure in Prosper ended all too quickly, when we found an empty and boarded up warehouse where we expected Carmela Winery to be. Oh well, on to the next one!

Our next target was Lone Star Wine Cellars in McKinney, TX. Rather than a full fledge winery, Lone Star cellar sells various wines from around the state. The two owners of the cellar each own their own labels (RRR, and Wales Estate). We concentrated our attentions on those labels, figuring we could find the others somewhere else, some other time.

Between us, we sampled a good dozen wines (or more!) in the next two hours. Unfortunately, by this time we were already a little far along from all the wine at Crossroads, so no one remembered to take any notes. But I will say that when we left, we didn't take any of the wine with us. So while the service was great, and the cheese plate was fantastic, the wine just didn't hold up to what we had at Crossroads earlier that day.

Overall:

Frisco for a Day

This past weekend, Monique and I dragged our friend L. and one of her girlfriends out to several small wineries in the Texoma AVA north of Dallas. This was the first venture any of us had made to the small wine country north of us, and we were all eager to see what it held in store.

First on our list was Crossroads Winery, in Frisco, TX. Frisco is a small town just north of Dallas, one of the many bedroom communities in the DFW Metroplex. There's really not much out there except for McMansions and cows, but with all of the awards some of Crossroads' wines have won in the last few years we all figured it was worth wandering out into Greater Suburbia.

The winery is situated in a small warehouse park on King Road. Getting there proved a little problematic (we missed the turn at first and had to get directions from a random guy on the side of the road), but once we walked through the door we knew we were in the right place. Wine barrels were stored right on the tasting room floor, and fermentation vats lined the far walls. John, the owner, greeted us at the tasting bar and started us out with tastes from a wide selection of the winery's offerings.

John started us off with his whites. The Sunfusion left a little to be desired, but the Vintner's Blend White wowed us! A strong citrus flavor promised that this wine would pair well with chicken or fish or, as John pointed out, laying by the pool. L. and I had both recently discovered white ports, and we were both glad to see one on the list. Monique isn't a port fan, but we all loved the Pearl Texas White Port. It was sweet without being cloying, and while it was fortified as all ports are, it wasn't overpoweringly so. Perfect for accompanying a before-bedtime snack.

The selection of reds was more expansive than the whites, with five selections from their label, and two more from "friendly" labels (Big Fire Pinot Noir, from Oregon, and 3 Clowns, a Cab/Merlot blend from Washington). The reds had an odd color to them, a brick-like brown tint that threw us off. John explained that it was due to his fermenting process, that he prefers to leave the wines in their barrels longer. As a result, the tannins were much softer, but a side effect was the softening of the color. Personally, I'm not the fan of heavy tannins that Monique is, so I liked all of the reds. But one in particular stood out for both of us: the CSM, a Cabernet-Syrah-Merlot blend that is their signature, award winning, wine.

All in all, it was a very rewarding trip out to Frisco. We brought home a mixed case of reds and whites, including two VB Whites, a CSM, the Pearl Texas port, and a few others. And Monique and I signed up for their mailing list, so they can let us know about any future offerings. John mentioned possibly adding Sangiovese and/or Tempranillo in the unknown future. If they do, we'll definitely make a trip out to try them.

Overall: