Confessions of a Huge Wine-R

3:45 AM – SIGH. Hey, idiot, you know it’s barely past Midnight, right?? You have only been in this time zone for 12 hours, you can’t have adjusted yet. *Closes eyes*. GO BACK TO SLEEP GO BACK TO SLEEP GO BACK TO SLEEP

6:34 AM – Well I suppose this is the best I am going to do. No point in laying here in bed and probably disturbing the wife.

Off to EPCOT today, or as it is called these days, the Experimental Prototype Construction of Tomorrow. This park is undergoing a massive multi-layered overhaul and expansion, and we are prepared for the fact that construction will be everywhere.

As this is our first day here and I knew there would be some jet lag, I booked nothing this morning; in fact, our first booking is lunch at the Japanese pavilion in the early afternoon.

We are here at this time of year for three reasons. One, of course, it’s my 50th birthday later this week. Secondly, we have never seen the Orlando parks decorated for Xmas. Third, and this is what we are going to get to experience a little today, we have never been here for the Epcot Food & Wine Festival. All of our previous trips here have been in the spring.

The Festival has been running for months and is winding down now –  only a week or so left – so today will be our only opportunity to check it out. Our plans for today: Lunch, then use our pre-booked Fastpasses for a few rides, then explore the F&W Festival and much on nibbles for dinner at some of the various booths.

This week should be the “calm before the storm” in terms of park crowds. Next week, which is US Thanksgiving, is going to be chaos. We have planned this trip so that we go go go go go during our first week here, and then take it much easier next week. I know that might be tough on Tracey, and we are prepared to change things up if need be, but if we can get most of our Theme Park-ing done before the holiday crowds show up, we can really have a relaxing second week with a few days planned to stay at the resort and enjoy the many amenities here.

One of the big challenges will be figuring out what to wear. The weather is going to be quite pleasant for most, if not all, of our time here. Today and tomorrow are scheduled to be the coolest days of the trip with a high of just 19 degrees. By Thursday, for contrast, that number jumps up to 27. Zero percent chance of rain today, which is great. If you’ve ever been drenched in one of Florida’s famous rainstorms, you know how important that is.

Ever heard the phrase “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity”? I think whomever coined that phrase must have been in Florida at the time. So that’s the issue; I can dress for 19 degrees. I brought the whole gamut: shorts and tank tops, jeans and T-shirts, and a jacket. But dressing for the humidity is a whole new ballgame. For example, it wasn’t particularly warm when we landed last night, but we both had sweat dripping down our forehead while standing at the rental car counter.

The forecasted humidity today runs between 77% (now) down to about 52% (when it reaches peak temperature of 19 degrees around 3 PM) and I really don’t know what that means. I guess it’s something we’ll have to figure out today.

At some point today, we have to partially re-pack as well, as tomorrow we leave the resort that we just checked into, and head to the Grand Floridian Hotel for 4 nights. Yes, I know, it is particularly gluttonous to have two residences going at the same time; but if you’ve ever been here, you understand the SIGNIFICANT perks that you get while staying on Disney property. I will get into it more once we are there, but it’s worth the extra money just to get the opportunity to book Fastpasses earlier. Hotel guests can book them 60 days in advance, non-hotel guests just 30.

So, today for example, we are not hotel guests so we could only book today’s Fastpasses 30 days out, and the main ride we want to experience at Epcot, the Frozen ride, was fully booked. If we want to get on that today, we will have to stand in a (probably) long line. I am not a fan of long lines. We had no problem booking it for our second visit to Epcot however, as we are visiting each of the 4 parks during our Grand Floridian stay, and were able to book just about anything we wanted for those days. It makes a huge difference. And since we have never been on the Frozen ride (we missed it’s grand opening by TWO WEEKS on our last visit here), we are very much looking forward to it.

8:00 AM – While the wife catches up on her ZZZ’s, I hop into the car to head to Target to pick up some essentials that we forgot to buy yesterday. Top of the list are some decent wine glasses. I am not drinking fine wine out of plastic goblets. Target has opened up a “store within a store” concept wine shop, selling some really good stuff. If by any miracle we run out of wine on this trip, we know where to go to get more.

Seriously, the complete and utter failure of Target to succeed in the Canadian market must be one of the great examples of poor management in recent retail history. Any chain that is a license to print money in the USA should be able to translate that into Canada. It just takes a little bit of proper planning to understand the differences. Shocking that it was mis-managed that poorly.

9:55 AM – Wife told me to wake her up by 10. I laughed. Well, the joke is on me as she is up and wide awake.

11:45 AM – We are out the door, on our way to Epcot. Cannot wait.

Goosebumps. Every. Single. Time.

So, it’s pretty freaking cold right now. The weather forecast is for a high of 19 and mostly sunny. I think they forgot what mostly sunny means.

1:20 PM – Lunch at Teppon Edo, in the Japanese Pavilion. Tracey was, I think, skeptical of this, as we never eat Japanese food. I just thought it was be cool

I WIN!

 

Food was great, ambiance was great, everything was great. We will definitely be back.

Wandering around we saw a lot of great food and wine vendors. You might wonder, why would two huge oenophiles, and Disney fans, have never previously been to the Epcot Food & Wine Festival?

Well, let’s get real. Disney is not going to allow guests to wander around one of their parks carrying glass. That means, wine in plastic cups.

Serious wine people cannot and will not drink wine in plastic cups.

So, the wine part of this event is really a curiosity more than anything else. The food portion, however, looks to be quite interesting. We should have one more day here before the festival ends to taste some of their wares.

Christmas has already come to Disneyworld but, because of the festival, not much here in Epcot yet. Here is the wife at the France pavilion in front of one of the few exceptions.

Look at her hair and you can see how windy it is today. There is no way it is anywhere near 19 degrees, and there is certainly no sun in the sky.

As we expected, the theme of Epcot these days is construction. In fact, the above picture doesn’t show it, but there is a huge construction zone at the back of the pavilion, as they create a Ratatouille ride. If you have ever been to Paris Disneyland, you know this ride. It is, by all accounts, quite spectacular.

So much construction. The next time we come here, it is going to be a whole new ballgame.

4:30 PM – Done for today, and headed back to the resort for dinner and some wine and relaxation time. We know that most days, 3-4 hours in the parks is going to be all we can handle, and today was no exception.

With dinner, we had a couple very nice bottles of wine from our Wine.com case.

What a treat. And I am going to make a bold prediction: This spectacular Chardonnay will be, at best, the fifth best wine we have this trip.

How can I say that? Well, I know what else is in the case we ordered from Wine.com, and I know where we are having dinner tomorrow: Victoria & Albert’s.

Regarded by many as the best restaurant in Orlando, if not all of Florida, our dining venue tomorrow is going to set the standard for meals. And the wine…oh the wine.

It will be late by the time we get done, so don’t expect an update tomorrow night, but you can probably expect an update early on Monday morning. You are going to want to check this post out. Trust me.

 

 

1:45 AM: SIGH. I know we have an early flight today but nowhere near THIS early.

This is, sadly, a common occurrence for me these days. 130 AM, 230 AM, 330AM…..just about every day. Occasionally it’s not a big deal, I am able to get back to sleep. But all too often when I wake up at these ungodly hours, I know instantly that I ain’t gettin’ back to sleep anytime soon. When I’m at home, I just get up and go clean up the kitchen or something. But here, in the hotel, I can’t risk doing much but trying to force myself back to sleep. The wife needs her rest and nobody wants or needs an early appearance by Grumpy Bear on this trip.

4:30 AM – Well it worked, I was able to get a couple more hours of sleep. Wake up feeling fairly rested. The wife’s alarm goes off shortly after I wake up. I really hate her alarm, every time I hear it I feel like I’m about to be murdered by bongo-playing pygmies.

She is feeling a tad better than yesterday, but was still up several times during the night. Sure hope that this is reaching the end point; who wants to have to get up to go to the bathroom a bunch of times on a 5 hour flight? I can’t imagine a much worse experience.

Checking out of the hotel is a breeze, as always, and we head to the airport. As I have mentioned many times before, it’s incredible how peaceful and serene this resort is, just around the corner from a busy airport. No exaggeration, it’s two right turns and then you are into the Sea-Tac parking garage. Five minutes if you have to stop for lights, at most.

6:45 – No issues getting through security and we are into one of the several Alaska lounges to relax for an hour or so until we board. Apparently they have opened a brand new “flagship” lounge here, but this one is one of the older lounges and it is right near our gate, so no reason to wander around and find the newer one. Next time.

It is SO NICE to be able to get into these lounges and just relax a bit, grab a drink or a snack, and sit in comfortable chairs. We rarely spend more than 10 minutes at our gate these days. I am SO OVER the thought of flying coach ever again.

And given that we are planning to go to Europe in a few years, we better start saving our money ’cause those flights are more expensive than the fines the NFL just levied to the Browns and Steelers for that brawl last night. It was just announced that they suspended Myles Garrett for at least the rest of this season. They should suspend him for life. Ripping off an opponent’s helmet and hitting him across the skull with it is about as bad as it gets in the NFL. Imagine if he had split the guy’s head open, or given him a concussion, or worse. I think he would legitimately be looking at jail time.

7:35 – Boarding time. Jesus H Christ there are a lot of kids on this f*****g flight. Thank God for first class and noise cancelling headphones. I must say, though, as I type this I am not wearing the headphones and I can’t hear any unruly kids, so either they are well behaved (puh-lease), or way at the back of the plane, far enough away that they can’t drive us nuts.

8:15 – This is our scheduled take-off time but we are still waiting at the gate. The pilot comes on the intercom to explain that we are waiting for traffic to clear behind us, and we should be en route “shortly”.

8:15:30 – This is a man that knows what “shortly” means, as we start to back up to prepare to head out.

We are on a ‘breakfast’ flight and have already pre-booked our meals. Alaska always serves excellent food, but I wasn’t that excited about the choices this time. Tracey is having a spinach frittata and I am having a cheese plate. The only other option was a big freaking bowl of kale. Since I don’t eat spinach or kale, my choice was obvious.

Random musing: Why is this flight a “breakfast” flight? It takes off in the morning, sure, but we are also still going to be on this plane at lunchtime. Everyone on this flight had the opportunity to have breakfast before boarding…..if not at home, then certainly there are tons of places to eat at the airport. But nobody gets the chance to have lunch, since hopping off the plane to grab a burger isn’t particularly convenient at 35,000 feet.

Having said that, if there were an In N Out Burger up here, the wife would find a way.

I’m just sayin’.

10:00 – Who knew this was a 3-course breakfast?

They start with a delicious apple-cinnamon-pumpkin smoothy. Wow. So good.

Shortly after that, our flight attendant comes by and asks us if we are ready for our appetizer. Who gets an appetizer before breakfast? I guess we do.

It’s a lot of food! A bowl of Greek yogurt, granola, a hearty bun and cranberry preserves.

People who know me really well are probably having a good laugh about now after seeing the selection of “Anti-Dean” foods on this flight.

Let’s all sing along, to the tune of “My Favorite Things”. I am channelling my inner Julie Andrews.

Granola with raisins
Or any cranberry
Yucky green spinach does not make me merry
Spoiled milk called yogurt makes my nausea sing
These are a few of my Most Hated Things

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I’m feeling sad
I simply remember my Most Hated Things
And that makes me feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel SO MAD……..

 

Well, at least the bun was tasty.

10:30 – Our flight attendant apologies in advance for our breakfast being served in the aluminum tins that they came in. Apparently the boys from catering forgot to load up the plates! LOL. I try to feign disgust, but as long as the food is good, I don’t really care if they serve it out of a doggie dish.

And it is GOOD. I made a mistake by not ordering the frittata, there was very little spinach in it. It was covered in some sort of dill-sour cream sauce, and accompanied by beautifully seasoned chicken sausage and homestyle potatoes. Luckily for me the wife wasn’t that hungry so I ended up getting about half of her food. My cheese plate is also very good, but I decided to keep most of it to have when it’s an appropriate time to start into the free Chardonnay.

10:36 – It’s time.

Our flight attendant is a terrible influence. She actually convinced me that it’s already 1:30 where we are headed, so it’s a perfectly acceptable time for wine. Can’t argue with that logic.

Now, airplane wine generally leaves a lot to be desired (although we have had some pretty good ones on other Alaska flights), but this is a perfectly quaffable Chardonnay from Paso Robles. Nothing to write home about, and not something I am going to drink a ton of, but it will pair nicely with the cheese plate.

Speaking of wine, we are sure looking forward to a brilliant fortnight of food and wine. Not only from the myriad of amazing meals we are going to enjoy at the various Disney properties, but also from the case of wine that will be waiting for us at our resort tonight. I ordered a random case of wine from Wine.com and it is scheduled to be delivered today, just before we arrive. You can expect a lot of terrific (I hope) reviews. There is some special stuff in that case.

11:05 – Wife has hit the wall and is asleep. I think we have about 2.5 hours left on the flight. With any luck, she will sleep through a lot of it.

12:15 PM – She’s awake, but only because some turbulence shook her. With about an hour and a half left in the flight, I can totally foresee her going right back to sleep.

Clearly she is having some sort of reaction to one of her many medications, as she has a huge, warm rash on her chest and under her throat. It looks like she has consumed shellfish or a lot of wine (she has had neither). She has taken so much medication in the last few days, it’s impossible to predict which one is doing this to her. It will probably pass.

She is back asleep.

And as if we haven’t had enough food on this flight, they bring around some snacks. Chips, trail mix, fruit and the like. I have not even finished my cheese plate yet!

Just noticed in the Wi-Fi details that we are traveling on one of their upgraded aircraft, which features Wi-Fi fast enough for streaming. I predict a Netflix marathon on the way home.

The rest of the flight is thankfully uneventful, as is our baggage retrieval. Off to get our rental car, which we pre-paid for months ago. We paid for a luxury car, looking for a car big enough for all of our luggage, and get offered a luxury SUV. Sounds good, until he mentions it is a Chevy Blazer. Hmm. Well, I don’t know anything about that, but he says it’s beautiful and it’s a 2020, with less than 1500 miles on it. I guess it can’t hurt to check it out.

He was right, it’s a really beautiful car. Tracey is the driver this trip since we bought this through her AMEX card to take advantage of her annual travel credit. She says it drives beautifully and it is very roomy. Of course, it’s a Chevy so it has undoubtedly been recalled in the amount of time it took me to type this paragraph.

It takes us a bit longer to get to the resort than we would have liked due to an accident on one of the highways, but we have no plans tonight other than some sort of makeshift dinner and an early bedtime.

9:20  – Safe and sound, checked in, have had dinner and are seriously contemplating going to bed. It’s not even 6:30 to our body clocks yet but holy cow are we both tired. The wife is feeling marginally better, which is a good sign for the rest of the trip.

Tomorrow, it all begins at the Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

What would our lives be without some drama right before a vacation that we have been planning for about 2 years?

Yesterday, our dog had diarrhea. I know, that doesn’t seem particularly interesting or newsworthy. But it is, trust me.

A few months ago, we gave her a flea medication, and by midnight that day she was in severe discomfort, terrible bloody diarrhea, and we had to rush her to the hospital where she was put on an I/V, clinging to life. The vet didn’t know what had caused it – he said it was highly unlikely that the flea medication had anything to do with it, in fact – but given that the night before last we once again gave her a flea medication (not even the SAME medication, mind you), and she turns up with diarrhea, well let’s just say there was a little bit of panic in the household.

Our first concern was for the dog’s well-being, of course. I mean, this little monkey has turned out life totally upside down since we inherited her from my Alzheimer’s-stricken mother. Speaking of upside down.

After that, my mind raced to what I was going to have to do if she got sicker and we had to take her to the hospital again. Last time she was in there for parts of 3 days. We were scheduled to drive to Seattle today, and stay overnight at our favorite resort near SEA-TAC. Obviously we would have to cancel that, but we would also have to cancel the flight tomorrow morning, the pre-booked parking, our nights at the Grand Floridian hotel, our dinner reservations, etc etc etc. In other words, we’d have to cancel the entire trip.

Seem excessive? Think about it. So, let’s say the dog is sick again, we take her to the vet and everything goes as well as it did last time, she’s in the hospital for 3 days and she survives and recovers and all is well. What are we going to do, drop off a dog that just almost died at our friends’ place to look after her while we hop on a flight to Florida? Not only would that be horribly unfair to them, we would spend the entire trip worrying about her. No, cancelling the trip (or postponing it for a while, anyway) was the only option.

Thankfully, she never got anywhere near as sick as she was previously. When we got up this morning, she was performing legendary poops, eating well, and generally being a total idiot (which is her trademark). All good.

So…..the trip begins…..

11:30 AM – We arrive at the dog’s second home, drop her off and hit the road. No drama (other than saying goodbye to her for 2 weeks) and no wait at the border. So far, so good.

Oh, almost forgot, we did have to make a quick stop at Save-on-Foods to pick up cheese slices for the trip. You don’t think I’m going to eat that processed American cheese garbage that they serve south of the border, do you? EWWWWWW. We also brought peanut butter, plum sauce and Kraft dinner.

If you want to have a bit of fun, next time you are in the U.S. ask them for plum sauce. They’ll probably call security. But Tabasco sauce is on every single table. These people are so weird.

2:30 PM – We arrive at Cedarbrook Lodge with very little traffic (perhaps the smoothest drive through Seattle we have ever experienced). Man, do we love it here. The resort, yes, but also the city. We don’t get down here enough.

If only their football team wasn’t such a disgrace.

A couple of people reading this just swore at me right now. I am OK with that.

We check into our suite, which has to be the best suite in the joint. Huge and ground level views of the wetlands. We were here about a month ago and brought the dog (we were not flying anywhere that trip) and had this exact room. I am definitely going to request this specific room every time we come here.

I am not sure of the perfect word to describe this resort. Majestic. Serene. Tranquil. We are only minutes from Sea-Tac but you would never know that we weren’t in the middle of nowhere. This is the absolute perfect place to bring a dog who loves to be outside and roll around like an idiot on the grass. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t great last time, but we will bring her back here in the spring when we come down for a wine event for a few nights. Hopefully we get a bit more luck with the weather.

They have a nice restaurant here and a spectacular wine list. It has a little bit of everything, focusing on the Pacific Northwest but they have a lot of odd, eclectic little bottles too. This is a bottle we enjoyed here on our last trip. Ever had wine from Arizona??

I bet a lot of you didn’t know they made wine in Arizona. In fact, every single state in the union makes wine of some kind. This particular winery has a lot of interesting grapes in their portfolio: Tempranillo, Graciano, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and many others. I’d love to learn more about where the vineyards are that get cool enough at night to ripen the grapes. Certainly the daytime heat wouldn’t be an issue 🙂

3:15 PM – While the wife unpacks (and, actually, repacks our suitcases for tomorrow morning’s flight), I head to the lounge to pick up a bottle of wine for our evening. Room service doesn’t start until 5:30 so I have to go get it myself. I find Stephanie, our favorite server, who recognizes me instantly (I think she has served us every single time we have been here) and she remembers that we are serious wine people. She brings us special glasses to go with our wine, and even remembers that we had ordered this bottle before several trips ago. Servers like that is another reason that this resort is really special. All the staff here is terrific, but Stephanie is particularly spectacular. It probably doesn’t hurt that we tip her really, really well.

Note to servers: Treat us really well, and we will treat YOU really, really, really well. Treat us poorly or just OK, and we will treat you accordingly.

I decided to go with a nice little Rhone-style blend from Washington State that we have enjoyed here previously (Stephanie’s memory was correct).

4:50 PM – Tracey is sitting in bed, doing a little bit of work in preparation for leaving work mostly behind for 2 weeks, and perusing the room service menu for her dinner choices. They have a bigger selection if we actually go to the restaurant, but she wants to stick to room service.

I mean, once the bra comes off, it stays off….amiright ladies???

5:30 PM – I call and order our room service, including my wife’s favorite sandwich of all time, a BLT that features, and this is no exaggeration, about half a pound of bacon. And I might be underestimating it. I am looking forward to posting a picture of it.

5:32 PM – Our phone rings. They have taken the BLT off the menu.

5:34 PM – I am successful at reviving my wife who went into cardiac arrest.

5:36 PM – She decides to order the substitute sandwich, a Squash Grilled Cheese. Hopefully it is good. I can’t imagine it will live up to the BLT but we’ll see.

Tracey did not enjoy the sandwich at all. So disappointed that they took away that ridiculously good BLT and replaced it with this abomination. My salmon was quite good, no complaints there. The wine that went with it:

7:00 PM – The wife is just not feeling well, still. It has been a really rough week for her. We are sure hoping she is feeling better soon; there can’t be many things worse than feeling shitty on a 5.5 hour flight. Hopefully she can get a good sleep tonight and feel better tomorrow. She is currently enjoying the lovely bath tub here, but it’s easy to see that she is not 100%. It is tough to see her like this, so often, for so long.

Tomorrow will be a better day. On to Disneyworld!!

 

 

 

 

 

When I started this blog in 2013, still neophytes to the expansive world of wine, it was my intent to inform and entertain; to enlighten my readers by taking them on a journey along with us, as we learned more about wine and the thing that most often, and most importantly, accompanies it: food.

What started as a food and wine blog eventually morphed into something else. As we started to taste more and more great wine, there was a lot more wine to review, and soon I could barely keep up with the reviews, let alone get into food or other informative aspects of wine culture (using the proper glasses, serving temperature, proper storage, etc).

In addition, I have kept another blog. A ‘personal’ blog that featured basically whatever-the-Hell-else-I-wanted-to-say. As time went along, that one morphed as well, and became pretty much one thing: a vacation blog. Sure, there was an occasional rant on lousy NFL refereeing, or thoughts about a great concert I just saw, but mostly, vacations.

As of now, that other blog is dead, and this blog is going to feature it all: Food, wine, travel, lifestyle, movies, etc. Anything I care to write about is going to show up here, and here alone.

For those of you who have been following along just for the wine reviews, don’t worry, those won’t go away. They may be interspersed with other things, but they will still be plentiful. For example, we are heading on vacation in a few days and the blog posts will be frequent – they won’t ALL contain wine reviews, but we don’t go many days on vacation without drinking wine.

I’m not going to change the name of the blog. After all, no matter what else happens in my life, I am still a huge wine-r.

As for the rest of today’s title, we’ve had a special bottle sitting here, just waiting for us to open it, for a month or so. We had intended to crack it open a couple times but for whatever reason, never got around to it. So, we’ve decided to do it today, and have it with lunch, so nothing in the evening derails our plans.

This was lunch: Filet Mignon strips, with two different sauces. First, a traditional Bernaise sauce, and second, a lovely Hunter gravy. This lunch was so good…SO GOOD…that we almost immediately went to the freezer and took out some more Filet to have another helping in an hour or so. I know the picture looks like there wasn’t a ton of meat, but in reality there was about double that amount, but it still wasn’t enough.

 

 

And if that weren’t enough, with the second go-round of Filet, we found another beauty.

My wife actually enjoyed this one even MORE than the Sassicaia, which has become one of her favorite wines vintage over vintage.

Up next: I will eventually find all my notes from our last Okanagan trip of the summer, but on Thursday our latest epic vacation begins, and you can expect the posts to come fast and furious. Disneyworld, here we come!

Last Wednesday was my 15th Anniversary of being married to my best friend, the love of my life, and my Own Personal Train Wreck (TM).

I guarantee a handful of people laughed out loud when they read that, including the wife 🙂

To celebrate, a surprise Anniversary party at our dear friends’ house. It was easy to get Tracey there under false pretenses, as their daughter’s birthday is the same day as our Anniversary, so we told Tracey we were going over there for a kids’ birthday party. That’s not quite what happened.

I had been planning this party for years, and had been squirreling away a bunch of wine from our wedding year: 2004. Our hosts kindly cooked a beautiful spread of dishes to pair with them. Let’s see how the wine held up at 15 years of age (spoiler alert: PRETTY DAMN GOOD). Interestingly enough, 2004 doesn’t seem to have been a really stellar year anywhere in the wine world. Oh well.

To begin the festivities, a little bit of the bubbly.

Next up, we started with the only white of the evening. This was paired with a salad that was SUPPOSED to be dressed in a Meyer Lemon vinaigrette, but some idiot (ME) forgot to bring the dressing. So we used whatever they had, and not surprisingly, it was not a brilliant pairing with Ranch or Thousand Island!!

Up next, Chrissy Tiegen’s Rotochick Soup (if you like to cook, and you haven’t bought her two cookbooks yet, DO SO. You will thank me, even if it is just for her outstanding soups), paired with a little California Pinot.

At this point, I’ve honestly forgotten what we paired with what. We had some spectacular meatballs, a mushroom risotto (my only contribution to the evening aside from the wine), spaghetti cooked in red wine (DELICIOUS!), and filet mignon in a whisky pan sauce. EVERYTHING was really, really good. And the wine didn’t disappoint.

 

There were seven people in attendance, so we got a decent pour of each wine, but not so much as to be drunk by the end. Pretty perfect night all around!

But that’s not quite it, dear readers! Yesterday was the annual BC Liquor Store Bordeaux release, so we stayed overnight at the Shangri-La Hotel in Vancouver so that I could get up realllllllly early and get into line at the store at Alberni and Bute, which is just around the corner from the hotel, to make sure we were able to purchase everything we wanted. I was successful at being first in line, but I clearly overshot things a bit, as I arrived an hour and a quarter prior to the guy who showed up #2. Next year, no need to go quite so early.

On Friday night, we finished off our Anniversary week with dinner at Market by Jean-Georges, in the hotel, and in honor of the Bordeaux release, ordered this little beauty:

And so ends Anniversary week. After picking up 3 cases of Bordeaux yesterday, we are confident that we are going to be drinking spectacular wine well into the next decade!

Next up: Trying to find some time to wrap up our Okanagan trip from the summer!

 

 

I know, I know, I promised that my next blog entry would be a continuation of our last Okanagan trip at Burrowing Owl. If I can ever find my damn notes, it will be next. But we’ve been drinking some great stuff this summer, and you need to know about it!

If you are not familiar with the Okanagan Wine Club (and you live in Canada), you should be.

Okanagan Wine Club Home Page

Basically, you can sign up (for free), get offers of great packs of wine from the top BC producers (some of them incredibly small and hard to get). There is no cost except for the wine that you buy, and once you buy just ONE pack, you become a VIP, which entitles you to earlier access to future packs. There is also a special Facebook group dedicated to VIP’s. Check it out.

Anyhoo, I bought a pack recently from a winery I was totally unfamiliar with, called Winemaker’s Cut. Here are my thoughts on those wines (3/4 of them, anyway, the Pinot Noir is still in my cellar), plus a bunch of other stuff. Enjoy!

Some other BC beauties:

How about a couple gorgeous white Bordeaux?

Down the coast we go to our friends in California for some stunners:

And, last but not least, a perennial favorite ‘cheapie’ from New Zealand.

That’s it for today! If I can find the Burrowing Owl notes, that will be next. If not, we will move on to the next stop on that tour, an early morning visit to Moon Curser!

So, you may not have heard, but there are a couple of decent restaurants in Las Vegas. And, one day, I am hoping to have eaten in them all.

OK that’s probably impossible, especially since we keep going back to our favorites. But on this trip, we did branch out a bit.

But before we even got to Las Vegas, we had a couple of hours to kill in SeaTac so we headed on over to our favorite airport haunt, Vino Volo, for a snack and a few wine flights. We were very sad to see a sign on their board informing us that this particular location is closing in less than a month! Although it is going to be replaced by another wine bar, we really like this location, which was the first Vino Volo in the country. Sad to see it go.

To the wine! All of it from Washington State.

Pretty good way to spend an hour in an airport, amiright???

We actually picked up a bottle of the Grenache Blanc to enjoy in our hotel room. Since we were already through security, we were able to take in on the plane in our carry on luggage.

To Vegas now, where we had three wonderful meals, accompanied by some spectacular wine.

Meal 1: Gordon Ramsay Steak, Paris Las Vegas

I had eaten here once, many years ago, and really enjoyed it. This was my wife’s first visit.

It seems like every time to come to Vegas, we have one of the great meals of our lives. This trip was no exception, and this was the meal. It was nearly perfect, from the wine to the staff to the food. Ironically, the only food item that wasn’t perfect was Ramsay’s specialty: Beef Wellington. It was good, but I’ve had better (in fact, I have made better). The rest of the meal, however, was sublime.

This meal, in fact, featured one of the great food and wine pairings of my life.

We started off with a couple glasses of Hartford Family Winery Chardonnay, to pair with our first courses. They were their entry-level Chard, which are always the same year after year and always very good. This one sells for around $45/bottle in stores, which is about 1/3 of what most of their single-vineyard Chardonnays sell for, so there is a huge step up in quality to their best examples. Regular readers of this blog will know how highly we value Hartford’s wines.

For the main event, we ordered this beauty:

What a treat. Glad that we have a couple of these in our cellar!

Earlier I mentioned the most perfect pairing I have ever experienced, and this is the wine. It was absolutely made to go with our dessert, Ramsay’s legendary Sticky Toffee Pudding. PER-FEC-TION.

So, that was a pretty good way to start the trip. I mentioned the staff, and I could not have been more impressed with our waiter and his assistant. Not only were they there when we needed them, friendly and funny, they were efficient beyond belief. There was a table of 12 right behind us; when the guests left, they had that table stripped down and re-set in about 3 minutes. And they did not HAVE to be that quick – there was nobody waiting for that table, which sat empty for about an hour. It was a level of professionalism that enhanced an already fantastic evening.

One down, two to go.

The next evening, a trip across the street to Joe’s Steak and Stone Crab, in the Caesar’s Palace Forum Shops. I have previously eaten here twice, my wife just once, and neither of us have been here in years. We have always had good meals here, but with just SO many great eateries in this town, it slipped through. Until now.

Another terrific meal! My wife had chicken and I had a beautiful Filet Mignon with a lobster tail. Pretty traditional, I admit, but it paired very well with our wine choice.

For meal #3, after a long day at the pool in the scorching hot (115 degrees) sun, we stayed in the Paris Las Vegas and decided to try a little Italian place we had never been to called Martorano’s. Our waiter was a first class wine guy, and he was just as disappointed as we were when the first bottle that we ordered, a lovely 2004 Brunello, was oxidized. So, we went back to a different vintage of a new favorite:

Another great meal and another great wine, although it didn’t come close to living up to the excellence of the ’15.

Well, that’s it, not a bad weekend of food and wine!

Next up! Back to the Okanagan trip, and a visit to Burrowing Owl!

 

After the epic Carmenere tasting, we decided we had time to hit one or two more wineries before calling it a night and retiring to our beach-front Townhouse at the Watermark. Our friends suggested Maverick Estate Winery, and we hadn’t visited them for a year or so, so it was an easy choice. Let’s see how these wines turned out!

 

That’s it for now! Next up, we continue the tour with our last stop of the night, at Burrowing Owl!

Also, we just returned from Vegas where MUCH amazing wine was sampled! Full reviews of all of it coming up as well.

 

So this is why we didn’t have time to make a few more stops on the road up here: a 2PM appointment with this fabulous event.

The first of it’s kind! I suspect they may do this again a few times, although apparently some of the older vintages are down to their last few bottles.

 

2006: Leather, pepper, tobacco leaf and golden raisins on the nose. The palate is more herbaceous than fruity at this point, but it still shows some black plum and a touch of black pepper. This won’t get any better, but it’s still showing well. 91.

2007: Dusty sage, black raspberry, some other black fruits hanging around on the nose. The palate is juicy and still quite fresh – blackberry, raisins, licorice flavors come through. Peaking now. Delicious. 92.

2008: Red raspberry, white pepper and jalapeño on the nose. Black fruit dominates the palate which still features grippy tannins. This has more time left in it and might even get a touch better. 90.

2009: Red fruit, cigar box and leather on the nose. Strawberry, cranberry, tobacco leaf on the palate. Long finish. Peaking now. 91.

2010: Herbaceous nose, with some red fruit, vanilla and oak poking through the herbs. Dark chocolate, oak, jalapeño on the palate. Delicious now and still has lots of legs left to step up to another level. 92.

2011: Red fruit, green pepper, plum and cassis on the nose. Blueberry and cassis on the palate. Acidity seems high and the finish is fairly short. Drink now. 88.

2012: Red fruit, dusty notes of thyme and sage on the nose. Blackberry, green pepper and a touch of white pepper on the palate. Long, lovely finish. Has another 5-7 years in it. 92.

2013: Aromas of chocolate, oak and forest floor. Herbs and green pepper on the palate. Very short finish. This was the only vintage I didn’t like that much upon release, and it has not changed my mind. In fact, it has probably regressed. 85.

2014: Lighter nose of red fruit and a touch of black pepper. I actually preferred this vintage upon release, which is not to say it’s not still excellent, but it might have shut down a bit. It will be interesting to see this one in a few more years. 92.

2015: Black cherry, black raspberry, plum, smoke, black olive aromas. Menthol, herbs, red cherry and just a hint of the smoke that overwhelmed the Okanagan valley in 2015. Should still age beautifully. 92.

2016: Green pepper, funky mushroom and red fruit on the nose. Blackberry, cranberry, smoke and a hint of cigar box. Tannins are silky smooth. This one can go another 5-8 years at least. 92.

2017: This is a beast. A BEAST. Hot in every sense of the word, with thyme and sage on the nose and palate. Joined by a hint of black pepper, mint and strawberry. I wouldn’t touch this for at least 3 years, and it probably needs closer to 10. Tons of potential for a great wine, though. 90++.

 

As you can see from my scores, it wasn’t easy to pick my favorite vintage, it was a six-way tie. When it came right down to it, I went with the 2007 in a photo finish. Perhaps it was a nostalgic vote, as I had never tasted a Carmenere that was well over a decade old. What a treat!

Legendary BC wine critic and writer John Schreiner was also in attendance, and it happened that the next day we would run into him at Lariana Cellars, where he would mirror my sentiments about this initial event: A real treat for all concerned, and we should all be aging our Carmenere longer than we think !

Next up: We had one or two more wineries in us this day, and we would head up the road to Maverick Estate Winery!

Finally getting around to reviewing all the wine we enjoyed on our little 3-day excursion to Oliver and Osoyoos. Driving up through the Similkameen, we usually stop at 2-3 wineries here but didn’t have time for that today, as we had an appointment to get to.

We stopped at Liber and pulled out a little picnic lunch, to enjoy while Mike, the owner, winemaker and just about everything else (he was out in the field chasing away varmints when we arrived!), took us on a tour of his new wines. Here we go!

The next two wines are not even available for sale yet; one just bottled, the other one still in barrel. Prices are approximate.

So that’s it for today! As I mentioned last year when we visited for the first time, I highly recommend visiting these guys any time you are in, or driving through, the Similkameen.

Next up: Our “appointment” that we had to get to was a pretty special event, a first-ever 12-year vertical of Black Hills Carmenere! Stay tuned, you don’t want to miss this one!