Well, sorry for such slack posting here lately... let me tell you, it's been a wild ride. Busy, busy, busy!
I got engaged on March 26th, in Las Vegas. It was wonderful! My darling proposed on a gondola in the Venetian and then took me to dinner at Zefferino Ristorante. The food was fantastic: I had the prosciutto di Parma e melone and then "Chilean Sea Bass Pan seared with White wine, Lobster meat, Fresh Tomato, Basil and touch of cream garnished with Leeks" while my darling had a basic caesar salad and filet mignon. The food was fabulous. I have to admit, I was a little rattled and distracted (every time I looked at the engagement ring during dinner I got happily tearful all over again) so I picked a dry and a bit fruity Italian sparkler (prosecco) and stuck with that throughout the meal. I wish I could tell you more about the wine, but in all honest truth I was too stunned to give it much thought. I do remember that it was very good and matched well with both courses. :-)
The same goes for the wine we had picked up earlier in the day. Being a wine fanatic, while in Las Vegas I naturally made a point of stopping in to 55 degrees Wine + Design. A lot of other bloggers have talked about the shop, so I won't go into too much detail, but I will say that I recommend them highly. The staff were friendly, the selection was impressive, and they even have a special way of packing bottles (inside an inflatable cusion that doubles as a bag) that makes it easy to travel with the wine without worrying about breakage. They had what I was looking for: an Australian semillion that was a few years old in a price range I could afford.
I ended up with a 1999 Quartetto from the Clare Valley for about twenty dollars. Again, I was a bit distracted, so I don't remember much about the wine, though it was very good. The quick impression was dry, mellow character, a hint of the nutty flavor older semillons are supposed to have (and that made me so curious) and tropical fruit, especially pineapple. I'd love to get my hands on another bottle so I could properly taste it.
So let's see, what else... I'd had a post for Wine Blogging Wednesday (this is several WBW's ago now!), which Andrew of Spittoon had so kindly reminded me of, but then Blogger ate it and I didn't have time to rewrite it. In any case, the unusual red grape that I found was Aglianico, and I drank a stunning 1998 from the DOC of Aglianico del Taburno (Fontana Vecchia's Vigna Cataratte Riserva) that was full of black cherries, plums, cinnamon, cola, lots of tannic muscle but a very smooth mouthfeel and very well balanced. It was 27 dollars, much more than I normally pay for a wine, but it was worth every penny. I drank it weeks ago, and I'm still thinking about this wine, it was so good. The aglianico grape is one of the oldest winemaking varieties, going back to the Roman empire, and there are some vintners in the region that specialize in making wine similar to what the Romans had back then.
So you can see, I've been busy! But, I really hope to get back to posting regularly now that things are calming down a tad.
"A Grab Bag of News"
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