Recent Wines; More Pacific Northwest

Recent wine purchases

I wanted to buy some inexpensive, lighter wines for nights when we do not want to finish a bottle.
Louis Jadot Macon Village 2010 $12 2010 was a good year in Burgundy.
Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc 2011 $14 I have had this wine before and it is very good. Fruity but with more structure than most New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs.
Borsao Red 2011. $6.39 The perennial favorite.
Chateau Dallau 2009 Bordeaux Superiore $12. Trying another 09 Bordeaux. Drank this wine and it is a winner. Good fruit and yummy.
Chateau Nardian 2009 St Emillon $12 Trying another 09 Bordeaux. Drank this wine and it is OK. More structure than the Dallau but not as much fruit. It will probably age well. Still a good wine.
Chateau Parenchere Blanc 2010 $12 Tried a Bordeaux Sauvignon Blanc/Semillion blend. The WS loved this wine; I did not. Alcohol with little fruit.

Pacific Northwest

Day 3 We left Victoria by boat for a 3 hour trip to Seattle. It was a foggy day and we did not see much. The ride was not very exciting. We walked to our hotel, a Marriott on the waterfront in Seattle. The hotel was nice and we had a small balcony overlooking the harbor.

The hotel was a short walk but up a steep hill from Pike Place Market pikeplacemarket.org, Seattle's food heaven. Luckily the hill could be navigated by taking an elevator 3/4 of the way up. We walked around Pike Place Market and found a place to eat. I had my first Dungeness crab. It was good and not cheap around $25 for a half of a crab.

Pike Place Market was quite interesting. Amazing flowers at very reasonable prices. $15 gets you a bouquet that will suffice at your wedding. The berry season was almost over but we bought some cherries and some peaches that were juicy beyond belief.

We did the tourist thing in Seattle and went up the Sky Needle. It was pretty cool. It is in a park that also has a rock n roll museum designed by Frank Gehry. The views from the top of the needle were great.

Seattle did not really impress me. We did not spend much time there but I did not get a great vibe. There are many homeless people and they are much more aggressive than in NY. For dinner we went to Wild Ginger.wildginger.net The food is Asian fusion and it is a very large restaurant. The food was good and not overly expensive. They have a large wine list although they did not tell me about it. Apparently they 2 lists; the regular one and the special one. No one mentioned the special one until we were leaving and I struck up a conversation with a waiter.

We ordered glasses of Washington rieslings(the restaurant was featuring rieslings) and a half bottle of an Elk Cove 2010 Pinot Noir $27 from the Willamette Valley. This was our first Oregon Pinot Noir on the trip. I thought that it was light but my wife enjoyed it. Later on in the trip I began to realize that I liked the wine more than I had initially thought. We enjoyed our meal.

Day 4 We checked out of the Marriott and picked up our rental car. First we made some stops at the market and picked up food for lunch later in the day. We had fairly long ride to the Willamette Valley.

After driving for a while we exited the interstate and a found a Millersvania State Park for lunch. We were still getting acclimated to the beautiful sights wherever we were in the Pacific NW. Mount Rainier dominates Seattle and the park we chose for lunch was scenic. It had a small lake for swimming and we found some picnic tables.

We ate our lunch which hit the spot and we continued on our way to Oregon. We took another exit on the interstate and headed towards Mt St Helens. We reached a information center and found out it was a long drive to the mountain. We decided to skip the drive and continue on to Oregon. We did have a great view of the mountain or what is left of it, from the info center.

We reached the outskirts of Portland and hit traffic at 3:30 in the afternoon. Apparently the traffic in the Portland area is ridiculously heavy. We were headed to Carlton which is the middle of wine country - the Willamette Valley (rhymes with dammit). It took more time than we expected to get to Carlton. The road had lots of 4 way lights and everyone followed the speed limit. ugh!

See my posting on Oregon wines for the details on our 2 night stay in Carlton (evening of day 4  and day 5) and wineries visited.

Had some very good wines recently at a friend's house. I cooked most of the meal.
2010 Ken Wright Shea Vineyard Enjoyed this wine. Ken Wright makes big wines and the 2010 vintage is OK. This wine was very good since it is a big wine in a light vintage but nowhere near as big as the 2008 wine which was more California to my taste.
2010 Benton Lane Willamette Valley Pinot Noir  Very light and not my cup of wine.
2006 Joseph Phelps Insignia Great stuff.
Chateau Grand Puy Ducasse 2009 I expected more. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot blend but no Petit Verdot. I think this wine will age beautfully but now is is somewhat austere especially when compared to some of the other 2009 Bordeaux wines that I have tasted.

I made raspberry sorbet and the plum crostata for dessert.

Enjoy the fall. Had my first apple cider of the season. As my grand mother always told me -- An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

2010 Bordeaux wines are next on the horizon. Let me know if you have tried any.

Pacific Northwest and More 09 Bordeaux

Day 1 We flew to Vancouver. Flying over the Canadian Rockies was quite a sight. From the Vancouver airport we took a bus that went on a ferry from Twassen(outside of Vancouver) to Swartz Bay (20KM from Victoria). First we had some doughnuts from Tim Horton  at the airport. Tim Horton's is big in Canada. The doughnuts were good.

After a 30 minute bus ride, the bus drove on the ferry. It was obviously a very large ferry. The ride was over 2 hours. The scenery during the second half was spectacular as the boat navigated between several of the Gulf Islands on to Vancouver Island. The geography in the area is fascinating; lots of islands, wilderness and water. Vancouver Island is over 300 miles long and there is not much development except for Victoria on the southern tip.

 We landed and the bus continued on to Victoria. Our hotel was easy walk from the bus station. The hotel was a very nice Marriott (Inner Harbor) and the room was about $200 per night.

Victoria is a fun city with a good blend of old and new and the inner harbor makes thing special. There  are boats, seaplanes, water taxis and restaurants. Victoria is a good walking city; it also appears to have a good bus system although we did not use it.

The first night we ate a the Flying Otter, a casual place on the Inner Harbor. The beer was good as we had Phillips, a local beer and the fish was fresh. We had a  halibut wrap and a halibut and avocado
sandwich. Phillips is one of the local beers and we had 3 different bottles.

Day 2 We decided to rent a car for the day. Butchart Gardens is the must see in the area.butchartgardens.com I was skeptical, a Levine tradition on famous sights,but my wife insisted. I then found a brochure touting British Columbia wineries. To my amazement there are over 20 wineries on Vancouver Island. Our day was set.

Right before the Gardens there was a sign for berries. We took a small detour and came to a farm where we bought blackberries. These were the most amazing tasting blackberries. A complex flavor that we had never tasted before.

 We went off to Butchart Gardens and it was pretty special. It was well organized at the entrance but not Disneylike. The Gardens have been developed a family for a long time and they change the plantings by the season. It is open all year round and the Christmas show is supposed to be awesome. They have huge greenhouses where they start all of the plants.

The pictures don't capture the true splendor.

We then found a few wineries. The first Church and Street has a large, modern, beautiful building. We tasted their wines and they were OK. Apparently the thing about BC wineries is that they grow most of the grapes in central BC and have wineries and tasting rooms on Vancouver Island for the tourists. The wineries try to make the big name grape wines but they are not the best. We generally enjoyed the whites - pinot gris, pinot blanc. However Church and State churchandstatewines.com seems to specialize in red wines. They were OK but the prices were very high. I can't see paying $35 for a Bordeaux blend from British Columbia when I can get a very good 09 Bordeaux for under $20. Wine economics do not make much sense to me. The restaurant kitchen at Church and State.

The next winery was de Vine Vineyards devinevineyards.ca. It was a beautiful winery on top of a hill with great views of Mt Baker in Washington. We tasted a number of wines and liked their whites. We bought a 2011 Pinot Blanc for $18. The whites are austere but have enough fruit to make them enjoyable.

We next made a stop at Victoria Spirits. victoriaspirits.comThey distill gin and vodka. It started as a winery but they found it a tough business so they switched. We toured the small distillery and tasted the products. The gin is expensive and probably is very good but I am no expert.

 

That night we ate at Canoe Brewpub  canoebrewpub.com along the river in Victoria. We ate outside and had a good time. The beer was good and the food nicely prepared.  It got cold sitting outside at night, around 50 degrees, but if was refreshing after the heat we have had in NJ this summer. The restaurant had a good chocolate cake with cherries for dessert which hit the spot.

 

 

Wines of the week

Chateau Meyney 2009 Bordeaux $33 I can't stop loving the 09 Bordeaux wines. This wine started slowly but it has a nice bouquet, good middle and great finish. Really enjoyed this wine. Drank it with an 09 Haut Bergey also from Bordeaux. The Haut Bergey had a great first sip but the finish was not as long as the Meyney. Both wines were excellent.

Recipe of the week

From Bon Appetit and adjusted by me. -- Preheat oven to 425.  .

• Cut up around 8-12 plums depending on size. Take out the pits and cut into 1/8 ths. add lemon juice, sugar to taste(around a 1/2 cup) and a teaspoon of cornstarch and mix with plums in a bowl.
•  Make a pie crust and roll it out to  a 12 inch circle. Place crust on parchment paper on a baking sheet.
• Pour plums on the middle of the pie crust leaving a 1-2 inch border.
• Fold the border over the edge of the plums and brush the border with a beaten egg. Sprinkle sugar over the egg wash.
• Bake in the oven. Start checking at 25 minutes. It should look nicely browned and the plums should be soft.
• Take out and let cool.

Enjoy the weekend. It is a great time of the year in the Northeast.