Wuh-ine, Wuh-ine, Wine.

In an effort to empty out some of the wine that we have piling up, I took a bottle of chardonnay and tried to make a reduction sauce for our dinner. Yeah, that failed. But at least there's one less bottle of Turning Leaf Chardonnay clogging up the fridge.

If you didn't know, Nicole and I like wine. I guess most people do, but the turning point was a trip we took a few years back to the central coast of California. Specifically, to the wine region of Paso Robles. We got lucky and went during a wine festival where most of the vineyards were participating by giving out free tastings. It was a real eye opener to the differences in wines, even within the same grape.

We drove all around Paso Robles and visited as many wineries as we could before we were in no condition to drive. I guess that's part of the reason you're supposed to spit out the tasting as opposed to swallowing. We were lucky to fine a number of vintners we really liked.

A favorite of ours was Dark Star Cellars. They had a nice set up with a number of different wines to taste. We ended up buying a couple of bottles from them. Nicole liked the cabernet sauvignon, and I think my love affair with zinfandel started here. We bottle two of each, including two of their port wines.

Right next door was Brian Benson Cellars. He was not giving out free tastings, but were tempted to buy anyway because Mr. Benson is the son of the vintner for Dark Star. At the time he was only 21 years old, and yet had been making wine for over 3 years. Hmmmm... As we shopped we noticed that he had been running very low on his zinfandel, so in a panic we scooped up two bottles of zin, and two bottles of cabernet for Nicole. To this day, we only popped a cork on the cabernet, and was not disappointed.

A few weeks back, I was having my weekly look at wine.woot when I saw a familiar label. That week, they were featuring Brian Benson's Syrah. I consulted with Nicole and since we hadn't purchased his syrah, I splurged and got 4 bottles (wine.woot was having a two bottle special). Below on the left is the dead soldier for the one bottle of syrah we imbibed. It was quite nice.


Some of you may recognize the bottle on the left, or at least the name, and blend. The Hitching Post Highliner was featured prominently in the movie, "Sideways". It was Miles' favorite wine. We found it at Whole Foods and thought we should give it a try. It was not cheap, but it was quite nice.

But not as nice as Nicole and my favorite wine. On our trip to Paso Robles, the first place we stopped was at Windward Vineyards. It was a choice to go there first, since I'm from Kaneohe on the "windward" side of O'ahu. I thought good karma would prevail if I went there, and we were not disappointed. Windward Vineyards farms only one grape, pinot noir. And it's really good. It was a really good introduction to wine tasting because with only one grape, the flavor differences were by year. And from year to year, it was different. For both of us, the best year was 2002. Smooth, flavorful with a very nice finish. We snapped up 6 bottles and now have only two left.

We like their wine so much, we joined their club. Every spring and fall we get 6 bottles, 3 each of two different years. We just got 2005 and 2006 about a week ago. And if you were at our wedding, 2003 was what we were serving with dinner. It's just a really nice wine.

I'm not a wine snob by any stretch, but I really do enjoy trying different wines and seeing what I like. I think the best advice I'd ever heard came from John Cleese of Monty Python fame. He said, that the best wines are the ones you like. Just because it's a $100 bottle doesn't mean you'll like it. It's not wrong to really enjoy a $10 bottle of wine. But don't stagnate. Keep trying new stuff.

All this wine talk makes me want to crack open something nice and have a glass. But that's a bit of torture for Nicole. She can't really drink right now. Did I mention she's pregnant?

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