Pinot Noir Heaven

Pinot Noir is my favorite red grape variety. Great examples come from Burgundy, France. Appellations like Romanee, Pommard, and Volnay produce some of the world most prized and expensive examples of the grape. Other less expensive appellations include; Alsace, France and Oregon, USA. I bought this bottle of wine about a year ago at a Korean Market, thinking it would probably taste good. I know wine regions, and since I knew that Germany sits parallel to France's Alsace wine region, I knew this wine would taste fabulous. Upon pouring this wine into the glass I knew I had something special. The colour was light cherry with a hint of brown. The bouquet was sweet cherry mixed with earthy barnyard. It was everything I thought it would be and I hadn't even tasted it yet. I dreamed of how I could turn that bouquet fragrance into a perfume. Then came the sip....oh my goodness, I can't even explain the shear pleasure this wine brought to me. Light in body with vibrant, deep cherry and earth embedded with spice and herbs. I was good. I couldn't stop drinking it. By the time the food was on the table, barbecued ribs and grilled short ribs........my body was feeling this wine. Feeling it in a great way. My husband, who was working the grill while I was feeling the wine came in with the food. I gave him a glass....He took one sip and said, " you're good"!!!! I said, "I know".

Rheingau 2005 Pinot Noir (Edition Maximilian) $8.99 (Korean Market)

Savannah

I absolutely love Savannah, Georgia! My family and I vacation there at least twice a year. I think eventually we'll have to give in and buy a home there. Each time we go we discover another great food spot, and on this trip, believe it or not, I didn't taste a drop of wine. Hard to believe I know! This trip was devoted to great food with beer.....delectable, cool-your-mouth-off, summertime beer. My beer of choice with my Vinnie Van Go-Go's pizza....Peroni. Peroni Nastro Azzurro is an Italian beer brewed in Rome. It has the perfect balance of flavor with bitter and acidity, kind of like a Heineken only smoother in taste and paler in color. This beer also went well with my husbands left over oysters from Uncle Bubba's Seafood (one of Paula Deen's restaurants). All I kept hearing was "boy that's good", after every bite and sip. Try this beer with your summertime grilled burgers and steaks and of course pizza!

Orvieto

Orvieto, Orvieto...it has a certain ring to it. Poetic almost, which is how I will discribe it, poetic. Now you know that food and wine pairing is, for the most part, a personal choice. Which is why I chose to have this Orvieto Classico with my homemade white truffle oil and mushroom pizza. The pizza had an earthiness that I thought would match well with this wine from an Italian classico region. I was right. Let's look at Orvieto, the wine region, for a moment. Orvieto is a white wine from the west-central appellation called Orvieto within Umbria, Italy. This appellation produces dry to semi-sweet predominately white wines made with a high percentage of Trebbiano (Ugni Blanc its formal name) grapes. Complex soils of gravel, limestone, and clay make up this DOC region that produces wines, including this one, that have aromas and flavors of lemons, limes, and green apples entrenched in mineral earthiness and acidic backbone. To make matters even better for my pizza and me I had an Orvieto Classico, which is an even more refined area within the Orvieto appellation. Think of it as a city within a county. The wines from this and any classico region are more complex. This young wine was very balanced and I'm sure that if I had let it sit in the bottle for another year or two it would be just as complex with little more elegance. I didn't want to wait that long!

Gaetano D' Aquino 2007 Orvieto Classico DOC - $7.99 (Trader Joe's)


Recipe - White Truffle Oil and Mushroom Pizza

• 1 thawed pizza dough or your own bread maker pizza douth(enough for one large round pizza)
• Truffle Oil
• 4 cups of Mozzarella Cheese (just to be on the safe side)
• 1 package of Portabello Mushrooms

1. Preheat oven to bake at 500 degrees
2. Using a rolling pin roll out pizza dough into a very large circle
3. Place rolled out dough onto a pizza pie baking sheet
4. Roll the edge of the pizza dough around the entire circle (tuck under all the way around to make a pie)
5. Drizzle the Truffle Oil inside the pizza dough pie (enough to cover the dough)
6. Layer Mozzarella cheese inside the pie (enough to cover the dough and more if you like)
7. Layer Portabello Mushrooms on top of the cheese (as much as you like)
8. Place pizza into oven and bake for 10 minutes

Makes about 8 healthy slices of pizza

Obscurity is coming back into Fashion

Have you ever heard of a grape variety called Petit Manseng? Well I had some this week-end at a winery in Northern Georgia called Tiger Mountain Vineyards. This white wine was a citrus, combined with stone fruit, bomb in my mouth. Flavors of sweet apples, subtle apricot, and honey was evident in the aroma and in its taste. I had summer written all over it. It was very good and I admit that this was the first time I've tasted this varietal, so other examples I do not know. What I do know is that this young wine was balanced in flavor and body. I couldn't even tell that the wine had a 13.5% alcohol level because there was enough acidity and fruit flavor to keep the wine balanced. When the winery owners, Dr. John and Martha Ezzard, mentioned this grape variety for sample tasting, I immediately thought....France. My second thought, after tasting it was, boy this would probably make a great dessert wine. Sure enough, after a little investigating on my part, this grape variety originated in South West France, and is the principal grape variety responsible to the great wines of Juranco. Petit Manseng is a superior form of the grape Manseng. Kind of like Brunello being the superior form of Sangiovese (Chianti). Additionally, because the grape can withstand a longer growing season, in some cases, as late as November, the grape becomes concentrated with sugar, enough to produce great sweet dessert wine. Petite Manseng is becoming a quite fashionable wine within the Languedoc region of Southern France. California is seeing some plantings, and of course you can find a great example in Clayton, Georgia, at Tiger Mountain Vineyards. 706.782.4777

Introduction to Living the Wine Life

I'm a wine person. Meaning I live and breath wine. Not in a lush sense, but in a "how does it taste that way sense". It started about 14 years ago. I was at a friends home having dinner and she brought out a carafe of blush coloured wine. I sipped it with my meal and thought, "what is this, and where did it come from?" It was so delicious. Turns out is was a homemade wine, made by the friends of my friend. They lived in California and made this terrific wine in their backyard. This wasn't a store bought rose, or a name brand rose from France, it was homemade, and for me, memorable! This started my quest for getting to know wine. I started with a simple Wine Spectator course. Moved on to studying wine with the Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET), I'm in their Diploma program now, working towards my Master of Wine designation.

In the mean time I'm going to talk and write about wine to all that will listen. Wine is the backbone of living life to the fullest.....it enhances our meals, it brings family and friends together, and it takes you to a place you may never have been before. As we will discover together, most wines, Chianti Classico for example, express the place or land they come from. You just have to close your eyes and open your senses.


Let's live the Wine Life!



Welcome