Sunday, April 24, 2011

Sampling the Goods: Alexandria Nicole Cellars and Novelty Hill • Januik Winery

In our Sampling the Goods posts, we describe the vineyards, wineries and tasting rooms we visit and our experiences therein.

Plans were made to head up to Mt. Vernon to visit some friends and enjoy the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival on Saturday, April 9. Having caught the very tail end of it last year, we thought going early might be better. Well, with the cold spring we've had out here in the Puget Sound area, there weren't many tulips to be seen. Luckily, the Tulip Festival website has an excellent map showing which fields are blooming (not many on that day), so we skipped the flowers. But we couldn't just clean the house during the day - plans were made! So, we made a quick stop in Woodinville on our way up north. It's on the way. We swear.

Alexandria Nicole Cellars

We went to Alexandria Nicole because we hadn't been there and because we wanted to stay away from the Walla Walla wineries that we'll be visiting in a few weeks for Spring Release. In addition, they were recently named 2011 Washington Winery of the Year by Wine Press Northwest, so we thought we should see what the hype was about.


Saturday, April 9, 2011

Paired Up: Sangiovese and a Smorgasbord

In our Paired Up posts, we review a wine and the food we wisely (or foolishly) paired it with. 

The Wine

2008 Yellow Hawk Cellar Sangiovese (Columbia Valley)


On the final day of our first trip to Walla Walla, we stopped in at Yellow Hawk Cellars. Sadly, that would be our one and only visit as they have since closed up shop. At that visit, though, the wines were good and the prices were great, so we grabbed a couple bottles. When we got home, the 2007 Sangiovese became an early favorite of the trip of ours, and we bought several more bottles at Metropolitan Market. It was also one of the first wines that sent us out looking for online wine reviews and wine blogs. Washington Wine Report has selected a couple of the older vintages of this wine as recommended Thanksgiving wines, and we have generally found that Sangiovese is a food-friendly wine that goes with most anything. We put that to the test here.

This bottle was bought shortly before Thanksgiving last year and has been in the wine rack in our living room since then. It decanted for as long as it took us to heat everything up, so about 15-20 minutes. That was sufficient for this wine, and popping and pouring probably wouldn't be bad either.

The Food

After working out, we needed something quick, and we needed to use up leftovers. So, we put together this smorgasbord!


Friday, April 1, 2011

Paired Up: Syrah and Pasta with Meat Sauce

In our Paired Up posts, we review a wine and the food we wisely (or foolishly) paired it with. 

The Wine

2007 Va Piano Syrah (Columbia Valley)


During our first trip out to Walla Walla wine country, we were pretty much blank slates on what kind of wine we liked. We knew that we didn't like white. We were wrong there. We also had an inkling that we didn't like Syrah. We could not have been more wrong on that. This 2007 Syrah from Va Piano Vineyards was the one that really grabbed us and shook the Syrah hesitance right out of us. We picked up this bottle on that trip and stored it for a few months in our storage unit until we got the wine fridge up and running, where it rested until we popped it open for this meal. We decanted it for a good hour or so before tasting, and that seemed to work pretty well

The Food

This is one of Hunter's specialties, so he took the lead while Katy helped out with the cutting. In the chef's words:

Pasta is the staple of many a young man with a high metabolism and limited cooking skills. Back when that described me, I was a master of spaghetti and the Prego jar. Eventually, I learned my way around the kitchen a bit more and came to make a pretty decent chili. I realized that the Cincinnati-style chili of my youth wasn't too different from spaghetti with meat sauce, so one day I set out to make pasta sauce from scratch. Or at least pretty close to scratch.