(Bob Gregg, 10:08 pm)
Opened a bottle of Lozano Añoranza Crianza 2004 tonight, a 100% Tempranillo wine from La Mancha. I don’t know much about Spanish wines yet, so I thought I would give this one a chance. (more >>)
(Bob Gregg, 8:15 pm)
Tonight, Sonnet made a very simple but delicious Etruscan seafood stew - chunks of salmon filet, jumbo shrimp, sauted with sliced onions, capers, olives, garlic, lemon zest and some leftover marinara sauce. She wanted a white to cook with, so I opened a bottle of Kretikos Boutari White 2005. This is a basic white wine from Crete, bought for just a few bucks from Total Wine, made from 100% Vilana grapes, a varietal indigenous to the island. (more >>)
(Bob Gregg, 7:00 am)
Tried another new varietal tonight - Piedirosso. The name basically means “red foot” in Italian; it’s a red, indigenous grape from Campania in southern Italy (the region where Naples is). (more >>)
(Bob Gregg, 7:47 pm)
One of the great things about wine, I think, is that everyone’s subjective experience of it is different. Like all great sensory experiences, your experience of a particular wine is often going to be due as much to the surroundings - the meal, the company, whatever - as to the wine itself. And you get to own that experience; whatever else it is, it’s yours. (more >>)
(Bob Gregg, 9:49 pm)
A few weeks back, one of my favorite local wine haunts sent me an email saying they had gotten in a Cannonau di Sardegna, special-order. I’d heard of this stuff before - Cannonau is an indigenous grape on the island of Sardegna, one of the thousands (literally) of indigenous Italian grapes. Except - it turns out that Cannonau is “actually” Grenache - or more like Garnacha, the vines having originally come from Spain (or vice versa, depending on who you ask). I’ve been meaning to try Cannonau for a while, but it’s one of those things that just doesn’t come around very much. Anyway, I snagged a bottle (somewhere around $20) and socked it away for some future time. (more >>)
(Bob Gregg, 10:21 pm)
When I heard about the theme of the latest Wine Blogging Wednesday assignment, I got excited: try wine made from some region’s “indigenous” grapes - veering off the beaten path big-six varietals and going native. Being a member of the Wine Century Club (currently over 140 varietals and counting), I’ve been meaning to get started writing something about what I drink. I love trying something new, even if the odds may not favor it being the next Côte-Rôtie. (more >>)
(Bob Gregg, 8:08 pm)
We had our friends Bob and Xiao Qi over this evening. Bob used to teach Spanish, so he really likes Spanish wine. So I opened up a couple of different bottles, and one of them really surprised me - it was Don Salvador Monastrell 2004. This is available in a lot of places around here, and for under $10, so I wasn’t expecting much. But what we got was beautiful… (more >>)
(Bob Gregg, 6:35 pm)
I got an email out of the blue last week from the wine editors at the Washington Post: somehow they got the email addresses for the members of the Wine Century club living in the DC area, and invited us to participate in a follow-up article they were writing. I saw in today’s Food section that I had a little quote included in final article, talking about a few of the wines I tried on my way to the Century.
(Bob Gregg, 11:05 pm)
I’ve finally finished trying to set up this site with a publishing engine - in this case, Wordpress. I’m still working out some of the kinks, but should be able to start putting some words to… well, not paper, I guess to electrons… in fairly short order. Only five short years after getting my own domain, I finally set up the publishing. Some kind of record for me, I guess.
On the other hand, I have been kind of busy.