I just love a great wine!!

Wine Corks!

Our Hostess - Michelle

My dear friend, Michelle, is studying to be a Master Sommelier which requires lots of classes, examinations and pretty tough blind wine tastings!!   So, in preparation for a big exam to come in May, Michelle had a really fun Ladies Wine Tasting Friday night at her place!  There were 10 of us and we each were assigned a certain grape varietal and region to bring with a price tag at $20 or so.  I was assigned a favorite of mine, the Pinot Noir grape and asked to bring one from either the Santa Barbara, Sonoma valley or Washington regions.  One of my favorite regions for Pinot in Sonoma is the Russian River Valley so I found a nice $35 bottle at Specs for us to try - Renteria, 2005 Russian River Valley, Ranch Road Pinot Noir.  2005 was a pretty good year too so the wine by all accounts should be pretty good.

Ok - so there were 10 wines!  We had an Australian Shiraz, CA Zinfandel, Napa Cab, Cal Syrah, Washington Merlot, Argentine Malbec, Tempranillo from Spain, Gamay from France, and two Pinot Noir's - one from New Zealand and the one I brought from CA.  All covered up in paper Specs bags!

So.. no... I really can't distinguish wines very well I've learned.  My palette is not all that distinguishable.  I also learned last night that after about 3 tastings, I can't smell them much anymore either!!  (That's why the pros spit it all out... but hey, I can't do that unless it's really, really bad!!)  So - how did I do in the tasting?  Well, I relied on the fact that I know what wines I tend to like the most and that was how I approached picking them out.  And surprise... I did pretty well managing to identify 4 of them!

So - my favorites and the ones I'm going to go looking to buy a few are the following:

Summers Adriana's Cuvee 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley, CA 

Martino Old Vine Malbec 2004 Mendoza, Argentina ($20)

Renteria Ranch Road 2005 Pinot Noir Russian River Valley, CA  ($35)

If you want to taste some really nice wines and not spend a ton of money, those three above are really, really nice.  I liked some of the others as well, but those three were my favs!

Michelle's husband, Tom, brought out a really good bottle of Pinot - Kosta Browne!!  Wow ... it was good!!  Thank you so much for sharing it with me!!

The ladies I met Friday night were all fun and really sweet people!  The world is so small that even in this little circle of 10 people who are friends of Michelle, I end up working with one of them and having worked with another in a past life!  Funny how that goes isn't it!   Jennifer and I did a double take when I walked in and we realized we were at the same party - we work together! Alejandra came up to me at some point as she knew me from some where and we figured that out and that was fun!  It was fun to see Joy who I had meet at a wine tasting with Michelle, meet Christy (and hear her amazingly interesting stories of a shared employer at one time), Sanna, Amy, Katie, Merilyn, and Arati! 

This is Jack!! Michelle & Tom's baby!  He's a real character!!  Check out the pictures of Jack's attempts to get a treat.  He's hillarious!

Michelle - I'm ready for another tasting!!  

More pictures are in the gallery (you may have to click on the gallery to go to Flickr to look - it only posts the first 20 pics!!)

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Other pictures in the gallery are from Rachel's last soccer game and then Rachel got a hold of the camera last weekend and was playing!!  Pretty fun to see what she came up with taking pictures around the house!!

 

Have a great Sunday!  We're going to start working on the garden prep today!!

Love, 

MA