I finally spotted the Gigondas in the wild a few months ago at our local warehouse and grabbed a bottle. Need to pop that cork I guess!
What's in your glass tonight?
- Thread starter Boatboy24
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Margarita.
I usually use Blue Curacao in place of an orange liqueur, but I'm out. Not buying more until all other orange liqueurs are used up.
I realized a while ago that I was WAY overstocked on liquor and liqueur, well over 30 bottles under the cabinet, some of which had been there for 15+ years. While I like pretty much anything alcoholic (yeah, I know that sounds bad), I drink mostly wine.
For the last 6 months the plan to use up a lot of things, especially the dribs and drabs, e.g., a bottle that has been 1/5 full for 10 years. I've made an Old Fashioned with everything remotely resembling whiskey (rum and tequila work great! Bourbon doesn't 'cuz the oak overshadows the other flavors). I have some liqueurs that I have NO idea what to do with, as I purchased them for something very specific and haven't touched 'em since. However ... I have the internet, so I'll figure it out.
FYI -- anyone making a Margarita, DO NOT use bottled juice. Fresh juice is key. My son & DIL gave me a really nice hand juicer for Christmas.
As a friend always said, this unit is "Da Bomb!". It's a monster, nearly 18" fully extended, but if you want juice from a citrus fruit, this one teaches the American IRS to get that last drop!
I usually use Blue Curacao in place of an orange liqueur, but I'm out. Not buying more until all other orange liqueurs are used up.
I realized a while ago that I was WAY overstocked on liquor and liqueur, well over 30 bottles under the cabinet, some of which had been there for 15+ years. While I like pretty much anything alcoholic (yeah, I know that sounds bad), I drink mostly wine.
For the last 6 months the plan to use up a lot of things, especially the dribs and drabs, e.g., a bottle that has been 1/5 full for 10 years. I've made an Old Fashioned with everything remotely resembling whiskey (rum and tequila work great! Bourbon doesn't 'cuz the oak overshadows the other flavors). I have some liqueurs that I have NO idea what to do with, as I purchased them for something very specific and haven't touched 'em since. However ... I have the internet, so I'll figure it out.
FYI -- anyone making a Margarita, DO NOT use bottled juice. Fresh juice is key. My son & DIL gave me a really nice hand juicer for Christmas.
As a friend always said, this unit is "Da Bomb!". It's a monster, nearly 18" fully extended, but if you want juice from a citrus fruit, this one teaches the American IRS to get that last drop!
Boatboy24
No longer a newbie, but still clueless.
Agree, only fresh lime juice in the margarita. No mix and no canned/bottled stuff. My fave is just tequila, lime juice, simple syrup and a little Grand Marnier. Sometimes I'll use fresh squeezed orange juice instead of the Grand Marnier. If you like Old Fashioneds and Margaritas, try a Mexican Firing Squad. Basically a margarita, but using grenadine instead of simple syrup and adding Angostura bitters. A lovely cocktail.
Mexican Firing Squad sounds good!
My current recipe for Margarita is 2 shots tequila, 1 shot lime juice, 1 shot orange liqueur, and 2 tsp Agave nectar. Shake with ice and strain into a glass with a salted rim. I rarely drink anything over the rocks, other than putting 1 ice cube into an Old Fashioned.
My next project is gin. I have 5 bottles, 3 of which were gifts that have never been opened. My typical is gin-n-tonic, gin-n-cranberry juice, and gin-n-Wink (grapefruit soda, which is hard to find). If I have Vermouth, martini.
I need to find Wink. It's still available, but hard to find. Now that I've said that, I'll find it in Harris Teeter. Which is ok, I'd like to be wrong in this instance.
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Boatboy24
No longer a newbie, but still clueless.
Could you use Fresca instead of Wink?
The homemade grenadine is really good!
https://www.liquor.com/mexican-firing-squad-cocktail-recipe-5270686
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I've saved the recipe
From Costco - I don't recall the exact price but I think ~$21-$22? Big jammy fruit with savory herbal notes and soft tannins, punches way above its weight
retaste from a bottled split:
Appearance - inky purple like the photo posted above
Smell - the wild cherries, blackberries and dried elderberries in the Black Iris improve the smell of the Regent to give it an interesting complex nose something to Spanish Tempranillo (or California Valdepenas)
Tannin - good
Acid - good
Flavour - On a scale of excellent, very good and good I'd rate this as good i.e. a decent house red (everyday drinking wine) from Regent. The wine is flavourful with a good aftertaste. It tastes (from the really good aftertaste) like it could be very good or even excellent as a cooking wine for things like freezer Beef Bourguignon to make Beef Stroganoff or freezer Coq au Vin or even Lapin au Vin or even pot roast from chuck, cross rib or blade roast as well as meat sauce for lasagne or spaghetti. It might even make a good marinade for roast duck, lamb shanks or steak (e.g. sirloin) especially from slightly tougher cuts like AA vs more tender AAA. Even wild meat marinade like venison, wild boar or moose.
Reaching way back in the cellar! My first year working with a wine club in Denver who contracted with a small vineyard in the Lodi AVA. The 2012 Machete' was a blend of 65% Cab Sauv, 15% Syrah. 15% PS and 5% Zin. It was harsh and astringent for years. Have not had one of these in years to boot. This is proof that time will do you justice almost always. I am sure I pressed way too hard and for that I paid a price. This wine is rocking hard tonight with no faults. Its been stored its entire life in my cellar which averages 58F. Take a look at that Lafitte 1+1 cork! Almost as good as new IMHO. Not much bricking. Color is excellent still. ph was 3.7 when bottled.
I did exactly what I suggested....made coq au vin from 5 lbs of skinless, boneless organic chicken thighs, with 3 lbs sliced cremini mushrooms, 4 young organic homegrown onions diced including the green parts, 5 minced garlic cloves, fresh organic lemon thyme and basil, worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, smoked paprika, 1 litre of salt free chicken stock, 1/2 bottle of Regent Black Iris. Sauteed floured butterflied chicken in cooking oil until browned on both sides, sauteed the sliced mushrooms in the cooking oil with a slab of butter, drained the mushrooms and cooked the onions and minced garlic in the mushroom broth, then mixed all of the ingredients and simmered for about 2 hours at boiling. We'll serve it with basmati rice and broccoli, tomorrow basmati rice and cauliflower. The flavour is excellent. Most of it will go into the freezer. The Regent Black Iris cooking wine worked perfectly with the recipe. Next time I'll try it with beef.
retaste;
Appearance - golden (however no hint of oxidation in the smell)
Smell - very good apple nose that lingers. Russet-Ambrosia has a really good smell.
Tannin- good
Acid - good
Flavour- this is very tasty with a really good, long rich aftertaste which tells me to use it as a cooking wine in prawn linguine to keep onions from burning while they are sauteed so they caramelize properly. If you are considering using any of your wines here is what I suggest based on my experience as a winemaker and avid cook;
Appearance - doesn't really matter
Smell- unoxidized wines are best but slightly oxidized (creamy, nutty) wines may be fine if you choose the right recipe e.g. a pesto sauce with pine nuts or trout amandine (e.g. trout sauteed in butter and some wine) may work with a very slightly oxidized creamy nutty wine, e.g. a very old white wine that wasn't creamy and nutty earlier on. If you have creamy-nutty old white wines use them as cooking wines. Also chicken or turkey tertrazzini from leftover carcasses.
Tannin - low to medium tannin is best. Remember you are using cooking wine as if it is a spice. Too much tannin is like too much pepper.
Acid - is not that important. If the wine is too acidic and impacts the food flavour you can fix it with anything sweet e.g. sugar, brown sugar, maple syrup or honey or even a second wine. High acid wine is very good for tenderizing cuts of meat than need tenderizing e.g. AA grade beef, all types, pot roast meats like chuck, cross-rib, blade or brisket, even round or sirloin tip roast for beef bourguignon with or without meat tenderizer e.g. sirloin AA roast or steaks.
Flavour - choose wines that have a long, tasty, interesting finish i.e. think of cooking wines as spices e.g. Mourvedre might replace Italian seasoning.
Bottom line - If you or your love to cook, then go through your wines, especially the older ones to find those that satisfy the above ideas. You may need to blend 2 to get a cooking wine that you like. Put your cooking wines in their own spot and don't be afraid to give them away as cooking wine gifts. My daughter is a gourmet cook. I always give her a case of cooking wine for Xmas or on her birthday and let her choose the ones that she likes.
Use your homemade wine, whatever you have the best way that you can.
Good luck with all of your wines.
Namaste
Klaus
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retaste. here are my comments:
Appearance - clear lemon yellow, very slightly petillant
Smell - very fragrant intense muscat similar to Gewurtztraminer
Tannin - fine
Acid - fine
Flavour - this is really tasty, with a really lingering great finish, and should improve as it generates citrate esters (new smells on top of existing smells) as it ages in bottle. It loses its petillance in about 5 minutes in the glass. This is the best homegrown muscat I've made in 11 years. I'll try to leave the last 5 bottles alone for up to 3 years minimum to see how they age.
My son in law and I tasted this vs our Chilean Viognier and Australian Orange Muscat from fresh sulphited Fresco juice at SG 1.083. This muscat was picked at SG 1.093. The comparison is a no contest event. The homegrown muscat kills! I am thrilled to have some left. I score it 9.5/10 i.e. a sensational wine. I wish I had more!
This is not a "paint by numbers" wine i.e. I can't dial it in year to year. For me this is the fun of serious grape growing and winemaking. Obviously I'll try to make this year's wine as good or almost as good as this one.
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a retaste
Appearance- clear yellow gold
Smell - good, rich, fragrant, lingering
Tannin - good
Acid - good
Flavour - tasty apple - grape dry table wine. I'll use this to make father's day prawn linguine in a couple of hours.
I did the prawn linguine for father's day and it was really good. This is my favourite prawn recipe excluding Japanese prawn tempura. It uses about 1/2 bottle of white wine to make the sauce to saute and then simmer all of the ingredients.
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Tonight I am enjoying Cosmic Explorer from one of our local cideries, 2 Towns Ciderhouse. The ingredients says "apple-raspberry-cranberry wine." The ABV is 8%, so maybe that is why they call it a wine rather than a cider.
It has a pleasant aroma of raspberries, which is also the predominate flavor, cranberry flavor is behind that, with apple in the background. They have achieved a nice balance of flavors. It would be easy for the cranberry to be overpowering. It has the right amount of tartness and is semi-sweet, but not too sweet for my taste. We first tasted this in a local restaurant last month and enjoyed it. We found it in our local grocery store, so picked up a six pack.
I plan to try to duplicate this cider, as it is very good.
It has a pleasant aroma of raspberries, which is also the predominate flavor, cranberry flavor is behind that, with apple in the background. They have achieved a nice balance of flavors. It would be easy for the cranberry to be overpowering. It has the right amount of tartness and is semi-sweet, but not too sweet for my taste. We first tasted this in a local restaurant last month and enjoyed it. We found it in our local grocery store, so picked up a six pack.
I plan to try to duplicate this cider, as it is very good.
Year-to-year consistency is hard to achieve for home winemakers for most wines. Large wineries have hundreds or thousands of barrels to blend to produce a wine similar enough to last year's. For the amateurs on this forum, even the largest producers make only a tiny percentage.
retaste from a cooler carboy:
Appearance - clear inky purple
Smell - good rich smell (even though it is from my cooler at 58 F)
Tannin - slightly high but fine for a young wine like this one
Acid - very good (the smell should improve as it ages from this level of acid which is IMHO a tiny bit high (which is perfect for a wine that is able to age like this one)).
Flavour - this is rich and interesting with a long finish. I'd leave it in the carboy in the cooler until Xmas-New Year, rack it, top up its total sulphite from 65 to ~75-78 ppm, and then bottle it for at least 3 years of cooler storage in bottle before retasting. I am blessed to have 75 of these for myself and another 15 that include Lodi Mettler Vineyard Petite Sirah for my wife at slightly lower acid, also tasty and very rich from the Amarone style Petite Sirah, which is the way she likes her wines i.e. she is a huge Petite Sirah (rich, low acid) fan. I have Cabernet Franc-Cabernet Sauvignon-Petite SIrah blends in storage that she can drink ("Petite Pinnacle") and likes before this new one i.e. Petite Pinnacle of Verdot is ready to drink in about 3-4 years at its earliest peak or and 5-7+ years at its late peak. Both of these reds taste they could last for at least 5 years and probably 7+ which suits me just fine. Because of the severe winter damage to BC Okanagan red wine grapes and possibly California red wine grapes due to fires, it is unlikely that I will be able to be able to buy Washington or California red wine grapes for years. BC wineries will buy all of the Washington red wine grapes that they can. I'm ok with that having learned how to make better homegrown red wines from Marechal Foch and Regent.
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Amador Cabernet Sauvignon 2021
here are my comments on the last bottle:
Appearance - clear deep purple red
Smell - good rich lingering nose - figs, cocoa, prune plums, pomegranates
Tannin - very slightly high but fine
Acid - borderline slightly flat to good depending on your palate. The tannin fixes the acid.
Flavour - rich, intense red. This isn't excellent IMHO but it is certainly very good and should improve with aeration in the bottle to drop the tannin.
Bottom line - If you can buy Amador County grapes to make as Amador wines or to blend with your own you should consider it. These Amador grapes will improve anything that you can grow that is high or slightly high in acid. They are cheaper than Napa, Carneros, Sonoma and have better balance than Lodi grapes which tend to be high brix/low acid, even varietals like Petite Sirah and Syrah that like a lot of heat.
here are my comments on the last bottle:
Appearance - clear deep purple red
Smell - good rich lingering nose - figs, cocoa, prune plums, pomegranates
Tannin - very slightly high but fine
Acid - borderline slightly flat to good depending on your palate. The tannin fixes the acid.
Flavour - rich, intense red. This isn't excellent IMHO but it is certainly very good and should improve with aeration in the bottle to drop the tannin.
Bottom line - If you can buy Amador County grapes to make as Amador wines or to blend with your own you should consider it. These Amador grapes will improve anything that you can grow that is high or slightly high in acid. They are cheaper than Napa, Carneros, Sonoma and have better balance than Lodi grapes which tend to be high brix/low acid, even varietals like Petite Sirah and Syrah that like a lot of heat.
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I opened a 2021 Elderberry to see how it was evolving -
Still a bit tart, but much smoother than when I last tasted in January this year. That being said, some of the elderberry character seems to have gone away. It's a bit more 'generic red wine'. Some nice fruit flavor, but a bit empty mid palate.
This was my first elderberry and had some (black monukka) grape to round it out; since then I have made a 2022 wine (a bit more elderberry, no grape) and 2023 (much more elderberry, no grape). Everyone says that it takes elderberry a long time to mature and that is consistent with what I'm finding. I think this might be a fine wine a year from now. I will take a sample to the lab tomorrow to see how pH/TA are doing, since it is so different from 6 months ago from a sensory perspective.
It wasn't the right pairing for dinner so I also opened one of my 2021 Pinot Noirs. It was delicious
Still a bit tart, but much smoother than when I last tasted in January this year. That being said, some of the elderberry character seems to have gone away. It's a bit more 'generic red wine'. Some nice fruit flavor, but a bit empty mid palate.
This was my first elderberry and had some (black monukka) grape to round it out; since then I have made a 2022 wine (a bit more elderberry, no grape) and 2023 (much more elderberry, no grape). Everyone says that it takes elderberry a long time to mature and that is consistent with what I'm finding. I think this might be a fine wine a year from now. I will take a sample to the lab tomorrow to see how pH/TA are doing, since it is so different from 6 months ago from a sensory perspective.
It wasn't the right pairing for dinner so I also opened one of my 2021 Pinot Noirs. It was delicious
a leftover blend in 2 small 1 litre milk bottles with air locks.
Lodi Mettler Vineyard Petite Sirah 2021 (Amarone style shriveled but not raisined grapes sky high brix 29%! in really nice condition i.e. no rot and surprisingly no raisins, Amarone style) with homegrown organic Marechal Foch 2023 in really nice condition in a 2/3 Petite Sirah 1/3 Foch ratio.
Here are my comments on this probably never to be repeated blend for me but possibly for you:
Appearance - purple ink
Smell - very good, interesting smell. The Foch seems to improve a sky-high brix, slightly flat but rich and intense Petite Sirah
Tannin - very good, very slightly high which is good for a wine to age
Acid - fine. The Sirah was flat. The Foch fixes it. Right now the acid is slightly high because the tannin is slightly high. The combo of slightly high acid and tannin tells me that this wine should age perfectly.
Flavour - this is very good. It needs to age to drop acid and tannin and maximize the smell. This is rich, tasty, intense balanced red wine and tastes like it could improve to very good-excellent (That would be a treat unavailable from the Petite Sirah on its own). I will bottle what I have of this odd ball red blend in splits to see how it ages. This is a really good way to use high brix Petite Sirah i.e. blend it with a high acid French American hybrid grape like Foch or any of the grapes I've seen on this site Marechal Foch, Leon Millot, Regent, Marchel Joffre, Marquette, Frontenac, Castel, Chambourcin, Chancellor, Chelois, Baco Noir.
If you grow your own red wine grapes and they are a bit tangy, try to find Lodi Petite Sirah or any other dead ripe Petite Sirah. Mettler Petite Sirah for this blending purpose seems like a no brainer.
You might even consider blending Petite Sirah juice in pails although I think that fresh Petite Sirah in boxes would be better because of skin fermentation.
Good luck to all of the winemaking maniacs on this website!
PS. I ended up with 4 splits (375 bottles) that I will try to age for 4 years i.e. drink one split each year to see how this wine ages
I'm drinking the last glass of this with homemade beef lasagna.
Bottom line - go nuts on small blending experiments, even on wines that are already bottled to open your mind to brand new possibilities.
Namaste
Klaus
Lodi Mettler Vineyard Petite Sirah 2021 (Amarone style shriveled but not raisined grapes sky high brix 29%! in really nice condition i.e. no rot and surprisingly no raisins, Amarone style) with homegrown organic Marechal Foch 2023 in really nice condition in a 2/3 Petite Sirah 1/3 Foch ratio.
Here are my comments on this probably never to be repeated blend for me but possibly for you:
Appearance - purple ink
Smell - very good, interesting smell. The Foch seems to improve a sky-high brix, slightly flat but rich and intense Petite Sirah
Tannin - very good, very slightly high which is good for a wine to age
Acid - fine. The Sirah was flat. The Foch fixes it. Right now the acid is slightly high because the tannin is slightly high. The combo of slightly high acid and tannin tells me that this wine should age perfectly.
Flavour - this is very good. It needs to age to drop acid and tannin and maximize the smell. This is rich, tasty, intense balanced red wine and tastes like it could improve to very good-excellent (That would be a treat unavailable from the Petite Sirah on its own). I will bottle what I have of this odd ball red blend in splits to see how it ages. This is a really good way to use high brix Petite Sirah i.e. blend it with a high acid French American hybrid grape like Foch or any of the grapes I've seen on this site Marechal Foch, Leon Millot, Regent, Marchel Joffre, Marquette, Frontenac, Castel, Chambourcin, Chancellor, Chelois, Baco Noir.
If you grow your own red wine grapes and they are a bit tangy, try to find Lodi Petite Sirah or any other dead ripe Petite Sirah. Mettler Petite Sirah for this blending purpose seems like a no brainer.
You might even consider blending Petite Sirah juice in pails although I think that fresh Petite Sirah in boxes would be better because of skin fermentation.
Good luck to all of the winemaking maniacs on this website!
PS. I ended up with 4 splits (375 bottles) that I will try to age for 4 years i.e. drink one split each year to see how this wine ages
I'm drinking the last glass of this with homemade beef lasagna.
Bottom line - go nuts on small blending experiments, even on wines that are already bottled to open your mind to brand new possibilities.
Namaste
Klaus
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That just sounds heavenly.
