Sunday Super Saver Grab Bag of wine!

Life is full of surprises that keep things interesting. Sometimes it’s a good thing to take steps to assure those surprises as live evolves are good things that we can rest assured that we will enjoy, today we are offering such an opportunity to you! Today, we offer you a “Grab Bag Special” of wine!

We have attained an inventory of some really great wines at phenomenal prices and want to share this pricing with those of you who have supported us online over the years. We are offering you a grab bag case of wine valued at over $150.00 retail for a price of $120.00. There are only a dozen or so of these grab bags available and this offer will expire Wednesday (13 February 2013: noon). While you’re enjoying your Sunday afternoon with the family, think how great it would be to have the ability to reach over and pop a bottle open without the guilt of it being too expensive and yet know you’re getting a great wine regardless of which bottle you pick out! Click here to go straight to our site to order your grab bag of fantastic wine!

Recipe: Winter Vegetable Chili

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 medium garlic cloves, very finely chopped
• 1 large red bell pepper, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 1/2 pound parsnips, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 1/2 pound carrots, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 tablespoon chile powder
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• Salt
• One 14-ounce can peeled Italian tomatoes
• 1 canned chipotle in adobo, plus 1 tablespoon adobo sauce
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1 cup canned hominy, drained
• 1 cup canned red kidney beans, drained
• Brown rice, chopped red onions, cilantro, sour cream and tortilla chips or bread toasts, for serving

 

1. In a medium, heavy enameled cast-iron casserole or Dutch oven, heat the oil. Add the onion and garlic and cook over high heat, stirring, until slightly softened, about 3 minutes. Add the bell pepper, parsnips and carrots and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned in spots, about 5 minutes. Stir in the chile powder and cumin and season with salt. Cook for 1 minute.
2. In a blender, puree the tomatoes and their juices with the chipotle, adobo sauce and water until very smooth. Add the mixture to the casserole along with the hominy and beans and bring to a boil. Cover partially and simmer the chili over moderate heat until the vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes. Season with salt. Serve with rice, red onions, cilantro, sour cream and chips.

 

In pairing a wine with this dish, we recommend going with a hearty red wine with adequate fruit to balance out the heat, such as a Mencia or Syrah. If you’re a dedicated white wine drinker, never fear as a Pinot Blanc or Godello will pair wonderfully as well!

 

Cheese: Epoisses

Epoisses Cheese

Epoisses is actually a French word meaning “completely worth the effort”—either that or “stinky but incredibly loveable.” We’re proud of the special attention they lovingly lavish on these cave-aged wheels–weekly baths with fruity Marc de Bourgogne (a traditional brandy made from the pomace of Burgundian wines) in their specially constructed temperature and humidity controlled caves, where Cave-Aged Epoisses is doted on by a team of trained professionals—because the end result, a custardy bacon bomb, is oh-so-worth-it. One slurp of the intensely creamy paste of our cave-aged version of this French classic, and you’ll know why they go to such lengths to ensure that this unctuous pasteurized cow’s milk round, made in Burgundy, France, is so delightfully decadent. After near extinction in France during the World Wars, Epoisses de Bourgogne was resurrected in the 1950’s by the beloved M. Berthaut. After being carefully hand-ladled into forms and dry-salted, each wheel takes a turn in French cave before aging to its peak in ours. Tucked into a clever wooden box meant to ease transport to our fair shores, serving Epoisses isn’t nearly as difficult as aging it—slice a crusty baguette and dunk away, adding a glass of Burgundian white for terroir-driven perfection.

We recommend pairing this cheese against a more acidic, lighter style of wine such as a Burgundy (Pinot Noir), or an Unoaked Chardonnay.

Wine: Alma Negra “Misterio” Red Blend

MISTERIO

In our quest to find the highest quality wines at value prices, we blindly stumbled on the Alma Negra Wines from Mendoza Argentina. This particular Blend is named “MISTERIO” and overall, the blend is kept a mystery as the name indicates. The tale of this wine begins with the winery owner, Ernesto Catena, begins by selecting a Bonardo Base and a secondary wine to blend leaving his winemakers, Gustavo Marin and Jose Reginato, to select the complimentary wines to add to the blend leaving everyone blind as to the final blend.

“MISTERIO” is dictated as much by the art as the science and proves a huge red wine dominated by the Bonardo and Malbec variatals with a healthy dose of Petite Verdot. While needing ample time to relax and fully bloom upon opening, the wine presents an enormous bouquet of toasted oak and oriental spices and deep floral aromas. The color is a deep crimson hue with vibrant detraction of light that radiates and sparkles beyond the ability of most wines. The body, or weight of this wine is medium-heavy presenting on the fore of the tongue with light blackberry jam that erupts on the crest of the tongue into brilliant cassis, black berries, and black cherries transcending on the finish with a light leather riddled spiciness that cascades into a lovely finish of mocha and spice.

While this wine has the ability to knock your socks off today, it also has the ability to age into maturity from now until 2025 when it will deepen in its intensity and become more subtle in its nature. Like a good lover, this wine has the potential to make you smile for many years to come.

Bottle Shape for wines…

 

Although there are no regulations governing the shape of wine bottles in the United States, there is a great deal of history behind their shape. The standard capacity of a wine bottle, 750 ml, was established by the United States relatively recently in the late 1970s and has become the de facto international standard. Manipulating the size of the dimple in the bottom of the bottle, known as the punt, is useful in adapting various bottle shapes to the 750 ml standard. Each year well over one billion wine bottles are produced worldwide; most shaped, literally, by tradition.

The most common bottle shape is known as the Bordeaux. The bottle is tall, with straight sides and high shoulders that help catch sediments when pouring. By tradition, green glass is used for red wine and clear glass for white. While this bottle represents the classic reds and dry or sweet whites of Bordeaux, it is the favored shape for bottles in almost all wine producing countries.

The Burgundy bottle, with its slope-shoulders is indicative of the full-bodied red wines of Burgundy and Italy. The full-flavored whites of Chablis, Chardonnay and New World Pinot Noir are also found in bottles of this general shape. The Burgundy may have been the first standardized wine bottle shape, because its gentle sloping form was relatively easy for glassblowers to master.

The traditional Cotes de Rhone bottle is similar, but slimmer than the Burgundy, with more angular sloping shoulders. Some New World Shiraz bottles have this shape as well.

Known as a Hoch, Rhine, Mozel and Alsatian bottles are tall, slender and fine in form. The Mozel and Alsatian bottles are made with green glass, the Rhine bottle with brown. This shape is used for wines such as Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris, Rhine and Mozel.

The familiar sparkling wine bottle is heavy bottomed, thick-lipped and dark green . The only bottle whose form is entirely dictated by function, it is designed to withstand the upwards of 90 psi pressure exerted by sparkling wines.

Fortified wines such as Port, Madeira, and Sherry are usually found in sturdy bottles that sometimes have a bulge in the neck to catch sediments. This bottle style may be either tall or short and is usually opaque.