Monthly Archives: November 2012

Trivet Progress

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One good thing about having a wine “problem” is an abundance of cork! Here you can see me working on a glass of chianti before our wine dinner adding a layer to the trivet. Believe it or not there’s a method to our madness here. On the left I have a pile of corks from cheap/not so good wines we’ve drank and on the right our corks from very nice bottles. I started with a nice big champagne cork in the center and am surrounding it with our cheap wine corks. The outer layers will have the nice wine corks so we can see the labeling and make it look awesome. Basically I’m just taking standard wood glue and doing a layer at a time. I’m using 3 rubber bands to hold it together while the glue is drying. The secret is not using too much glue and having good tight rubber bands. Wood glue takes 12 hours to dry so it’s not a quick process but you can always add more layers before it’s completely dry. When you’re done you’ll have a durable trivet that has some character and should last forever! Stay tuned for the final product.

2009 Domaine Durieu Chateauneuf du Pape

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We were only planning on opening two bottles during our dinner but we were way ahead of schedule so I went downstairs and came up with a CdP. I was going to grab a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo to stick with our Italian theme but I wanted our guest to experience something different…but not this different. This was not a great CdP. This is the second and probably last 2009 I’m going to buy.

MobyGrape: 68. This smelled like a condom. I know I kid around a lot, but there were some serious eau de Trojan going on. And I really just couldn’t get past that. I was hoping it would go away after a while, or I wouldn’t notice it if I actually drank it instead of just sniffing at it, but that odor was still there and quite frankly ruined the whole thing for me. Fellas, if you’re trying to impress a special lady on a date by whipping this one out, she’ll pick up what you’re putting down, but don’t be surprised if she’s not into it. I feel like I’ve avoided so many obvious jokes in this review that I deserve some sort of prize.

colonelgrape: 65. How can I follow that? In all honesty when we were drinking it I was sitting there trying my best to defend it since I love CdP. However thinking about it more and more it just simply wasn’t a good example at all. I didn’t get the condom smell, yes we opened one up to compare, but everyone else did. I can’t give much useful tasting info after a long night but I do remember it being much more tart and just plain. Good CdP should be complex, structured, and exciting…this was not good CdP.

Guest Opinion: I was amazed at first wtih how accurate Mobygrape’s assessment of the condom smell was, but as I got more drunk, I started to question it, especially after smelling a real condom for comparison.  I wasn’t too fond of the flavor, but it definitely improved when drinking with the meal, although that might have also been me just enjoying the food.

2007 Aurelio Settimo Barolo

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This was our second wine of our Saturday dinner. We were eating Italian so we decided to stick with Italian wine. We enjoyed shrimp cocktail and stuffed mushrooms with garlic, onion,  mushroom, baby shrimp, butter, and breadcrumbs along with lasagna and garlic bread. Once we polished off the Chianti we dove right in:

MobyGrape:86.  I liked it.  I don’t really remember what it was like, I couldn’t really get a handle on the smell but it was smooth with some sort of meh taste at the end.  Super helpful, I know!  I should really try it again and take notes.

colonelgrape: 93. I will try and be more helpful than Moby on this one. Only being 5 years old this is a young bottle. Up front it had a very sophisticated smell of earth, spices, and dark fruit. The tannis gave the wine structure but didn’t overpower it. The fruit taste really came out while the wine was on the palate with tastes of black cherry, citrus, strawberry. There were acids on the palate but it went well with the fruit. It went down very smoothly leaving an earthy, leathery, dark, minerally taste on the back end. This wine was extremely complex and structured. It offered something different every step of the way and I enjoyed it from start to finish. There was enough tannin there that I think this wine would only grow after a few more years in the bottle…I’d love to try it again in 2015-2017.

Guest Opinion: This was touted as a good wine on it’s own, and it delivered.  I felt like it smelled of nail polish, although the Colonel would surely tell me do smell past the alcohol.  I liked the complex flavor and smooth aftertaste.

Wine Dinner!

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We had a good friend from California over for dinner and wine. We made a lasagna, garlic bread, stuffed mushrooms, and shrimp cocktail with Moby’s famous cocktail sauce. Of course we started drinking before anything happened and here’s what we drank:

2011 Gabbiano Chianti with the shrimp and while cooking.

2007 Aurellio Settimo Barolo with the mushrooms and starting dinner.

2009 Domaine Durieu Chateaunuef du Pape to finish off the night

We though about having a glass of port to close off the night but after a bottle of wine each we couldn’t go any further. Everyone had a great time and the food was excellent. Stay tuned for a review of each wine!

2011 Louis Jadot Beaujolais-Villages

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We had this wine at Moby’s parents with some cheese and pepperoni pizza the other day.

colonelgrape: 77. A “pizza wine” is the best way to describe this. It’ has a big fruity taste, good acidity, low tannin, and a hint of spice. I don’t think I’d ever order this at a restaurant or pay more than $12 for a bottle and probably wouldn’t have it with a meal that costs more than $12 either…but it’s not meant to be fancy so I’d say it’s average for what it is.

MobyGrape: 75.  Smelled like buttery dirty laundry.  If you don’t know what dirty laundry smells like, you probably don’t do much of it and have a load or eight lying around, so you might want to go ahead and throw one in before you read any further.  Go on, I’ll wait for you.  Besides the weird odor, it tasted nice, actually a little like butter.  I’m a little late writing this review so I can’t really remember anything else about it but I did enjoy it.  It wasn’t fancy, but it was easy to drink.  Keep on being Boozshy.