2004 Tacama Gran Blanc

We went out on a limb and got a white wine for our South American adventure. After some searching, we found a 2004 Tacama Gran Blanc. The Tacama Vineyard is located about 180 miles from Lima, Peru.

From the Tacama website:

The pale yellow colour of this wine gives it a lovely presentation. The freshness of its bouquet is revealed on first contact with the nose. Both flowery and fruity, with highly agreeable citric notes, its flavours give it a particular finesse. The grape varieties used are Semillon, Sauvignon, and Chenin.

The Tacama winery website also suggests some dinner pairings with their wines, and for this wine, suggested “Plain poultry and fish dishes, such as Roast Chicken, Roast Turkey, Fish in Meniuere Sauce, etc.”

We had this wine on Sunday night, paired with a Yancy’s Fancy Champagne cheese and Triscuits. (Money baby, we’re money.) The taste was fruity, light and crisp. The only thing we might have done differently was let the wine warm a bit before trying to drink it – we had refrigerated it since Friday (when it was bought) and it was very chilled.

While not fans of white wine, this one was an interesting change from the reds we normally drink. I think we paid about $10 for the bottle. ($9.99? Perhaps I should have saved the receipt.) While it could be an alternative to the usual pinot grigio or chardonnay (if we drank those on a regular basis), I don’t think we’ll buy this again.

Mighty Tasty!

Sorry to be late to the red wine party!

The PunditMom family was away for the long weekend for a family wedding, but that doesn't mean that red wine wasn't on my mind.

In the spirit of the challenge, I truly walked into our local wine shop and chose something on a whim that I had never tried before -- a Spanish wine called Onix. At $13.99, it met the financial part of the bargain.

The short story -- this is a yummy wine (you can see I will need to do better on my wine descriptions!)

It is from the Priorat region of Spain, which is about 100 miles southwest of Barcelona and is made from 50% Grenache and 50% Carinena grapes, and reminded me of a nice Burgundy.

This was smooth and lovely when we first opened it and had not lost any of that roundness after being in the fridge for several days. We liked it on its own and with pizza (nothing but high gourmet dining here at Chez PunditMom)! It had lots of berry flavors and a hint of chocolate.

The highest praise? Mr. PunditMom is the true wine connoisseur in our household and he gets suspicious when I buy something new (especially if I pick it up because it has a cute label!).

But he said this was definitely one to add to the weeknight wine rotation!

Just don't ask me about the merlot I had on our flight to L.A. this weekend ... let's just say it was not so fine, with not so subtle hints of Robitussin!

June's Assignment

The Dubya family will be out of town for the next few days, so I thought I'd post June's assignment a little early (see right hand column) -- just in case anybody wants to do some whining over the long weekend.

Everyone has been so incredibly responsive (holy crap, 5 reviews in just over a week!!!)......either this is a rockin' club, or we're just a bunch of winos.... either way, wicked cool!

We'll shoot for having this assignment completed for June 15th, and if at that point we've got a good number of reviews, and people are interested -- I'll post a second assignment -- otherwise, we'll just extend it 'til the end of the month.

Sound good?

By the way..... completely unrelated to June's assignment..... is it all kinds of wrong to buy a wine because of the very cool bottle????

Wine.com

I've never bought wine on-line (look I'm a poet, and I didn't know it!) but, if you order before Friday, May 25th, www.wine.com is offering 1¢ shipping on orders of $99 and above, just enter promo code PENNY -- seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Cheers!

Archetype Shiraz: Sometimes Pairing is Everything

The day before I found out about this blog I drank a bottle (well, my husband and I drank a bottle) of Archetype Shiraz. I had never tried it before and I really liked it. It was a big round flavor. We drank it with some Cambozola cheese and crackers (I highly recommend this cheese if you haven't had it. You can get it at Trader Joe's for under $5. It is good with every wine.)

I loved this wine. I had to go to the store and buy it again to review it because 1) I had no idea how much I paid for it, 2) I couldn't remember anything except I loved it and 3) I didn't know where it came from.

Archetype is from the Barossa region of South Australia. I tend to buy Shiraz if it says Barossa on the bottle because the grapes seem to have a very rich deep flavor.

What was my point? Oh yeah, so I bought another bottle - it was $12.99 at Wine Warehouse, I think they have it featured this month. I brought it home and we drank it with chicken tacos.

It wasn't nearly as good. It tasted sort of bitter with the pico and jalapeno flavors. I am learning, but I am still often surprised at how important pairing your wine is.


I will definitely buy this wine again, but next time I am going to drink it with some steak or a roast or some other red meat. I bet it would be great with hamburgers, especially if you used bleu cheese or Gorgonzola on it. I think the Shiraz needs fat to compliment it. I wouldn't drink it with anything spicy again.

(Check out the cheese - it rocks.)

Feeling Continental

First an introduction: for anyone who doesn’t know, insurancemom is Clare’s Mom. In other words, we’re married. We’re Sue and Darren. Thanks for having us.

Like the Dubyas, we don’t usually pair wines with dinners. We wait for Clare to go to bed and then pop open a bottle. We do usually pair a bottle with some cheese or crackers or some other picking like olives or sausage though (can’t call it an appetizer if it’s after dinner…and hors d’oeuvres is just too fancy for us), and that’s what we did on Saturday.

We also picked a wine that we’d already bought—a 2003 Spanish rioja from Marqués de Cárceres that we picked up for $12 a few weeks ago, but hadn’t tried yet. Spanish wines have become popular in the past few years, and we’ve had a few others that we’ve liked.

The winery describes the wine like this:

Bright, ruby red colour. Lively bouquet with notes of red fruit that add a pleasant freshness softened by a discreet touch of vanilla. Deliciously full in the mouth where well integrated, silky tannins highlight the wine’s fruit. Good length in which the complexity of flavours comes through delicately.

I’ll be honest. I don’t know all the proper words for describing a wine. I know that bouquet equals smell; I know that tannins have something to do with the grape skins. But, beyond obviously dry, sweet or fruity wines, I’m not good with all that “undertones” and “hints of” talk. Here’s what I can say: the wine is smooth and fruity and a slight oakiness from the casking is obvious. It’s exactly what I like in a red wine.

The wine is recommended as an accompaniment to Mediterranean food, grilled vegetables, pasta, paella and rice dishes, hams, sausages and cheeses. In other words, it’s a good pairing for Spanish food or tapas—which might just be the coolest word for what we had it with.

By popular demand

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