Recent Wine List

Wine is probably my favorite drink in the world, but it wasn’t always. I was pretty much indifferent to wine until I went to Strasbourg, and really learned about the wines of Alsace.

Of the seven main varietals in Alsace, six are white, and this post isn’t about them. A future one may be, but in the meantime if you want a great wine to go with fish or chicken in a cream sauce, try Lucien Albrecht’s Sylvaner (or Pinot Blanc)…watch the vintage – you probably don’t want older than 3 years or so from Alsace.

I’ve had a few red wines worth mentioning recently, so that’s the topic of the day. The least impressive was Jed Steele’s Shooting Star 2002 Pinot Noir. Now, unlike certain other bloggers, Pinot Noir is one of my favorite reds, but this one left much to be desired. A good cherry flavor starts this wine off, and lingers throughout, but is more or less flying solo: no other flavors really jump out to support it. A touch of spiciness, inherent to the Pinot, comes through, and perhaps some smoke. Not great, but just fine as an aside to my seared ahi tuna. Not worth the restaurant price though!

On nearly the opposite end of the spectrum, we find the Signorello 2001 Napa Valley Zinfandel. My parents have recently been getting really into wines (particularly the Napa ones), which may or may not be a brilliant scheme to get me to come to dinner more often. Should that be the case, I’m perfectly OK with it. A good wine snob, I tend to look upon the zinfandel with some suspicion, in addition to just generally not liking them. But one sniff of this
rich, deep red wine effectively opened my mind. Powerful and spicy, the dominant flavor for me was currant, with perhaps a shade of eucalyptus. It’s unfiltered, but the wine made me happily overlook the sediment. Expensive, but worth it.
At another dinner chez parents, we had the winner of the three: the Edge 2002 Cabernet-Sauvignon. Beginning with a gorgeous nose, full of currant and sharp with something that might be green apple, the wine itself is relatively light, but full of flavor. The strong currant nose yields to a cherry flavor, with currant to the side, and again a sharp flavor I couldn’t identify. This is a damn good wine.

Lastly, a guilty pleasure. I love port: it’s sweet, cheap, satisfying, and can be really good. The one I keep in my bar at home is Clocktower, from Australia…it’s a fairly basic port, but with a nice chocolatey flavor and enough depth not to make me feel cheap. But I am cheap, so Clocktower’s $10 price tag adds greatly to its appeal.