Penney’s Palate

We drank this wine with some homemade pizza. It was perfect for the evening. I liked this wine because it was a very gentle wine. It was good to drink before dinner when we were munching on cheese, waiting for one of our guests to arrive before putting the pizzas in the oven. There was a nice bouquet that consisted of subtle hints of cherry. It tasted like cherries and cola. Kind of like cherry coke, only in a wine. It didn’t have a finish, but that is okay because I’ve never had a Chianti that has had a finish. All Chiantis seem very subtle and gentle.

I would recommend this as a good wine if you don’t drink a lot of wine, but are interested in a good wine. If you’re making pasta or pizza, I would also recommend it. One of our guests brought it over, and I would bet that he bought it from Harris Teeter. So you can probably find it in a grocery store near you too.

I give this wine 87 points. It was a very solid Chianti, but nothing about it pushed it over the edge of greatness.

Tommy and I drank this Cab with a lovely 30-minute meal by Rachel Ray. The meal was pretty good and the wine was okay. I was expecting this Cab to be a little bigger and mature in the fruitiness, but it was not. The mid-palate was full of fruitiness, but of a more unpleasant sour fruitiness. And a little syrupy too I thought. I don’t remember it having much of a finish to it. I like finishes, I think they are my most favorite component of wine. My next favorite component would be the nose (smell). The only thing I could smell was heat (which means alcohol). I was slightly disappointed when first tasting it because I wanted something big and bold to go with the Gorgonzola beef tenderloin that I had just made. I enjoyed the wine much better on its own after dinner, although I only got a few sips of enjoyment out of it before I zonked out on the couch. At 9 pm. On a Friday night. I am such a loser.

I will give this wine 82 points. Tommy and I still have 1/2 bottle of it to finish. I think that I would enjoy drinking a glass sometime this week when I get home from work and want something to drink while making dinner (or watching Tommy make dinner). It seems like more of that kind of wine rather than a during-dinner or an after-dinner enjoyment.

Napa Valley, Chavez & Leeds Vineyard - Rutherford

We chose to drink this wine because I had a pot of chili on the stove. The chili was a little on the spicy side, so the wine had to be able to stand above and beyond the flavors in the chili. The choice of petite sirah was perfect. It is critical for this wine to be decanted, unless you want to drink a wine that has extremely strong tannins. After an hour and a half in the decanter, the wine mellowed out. The tannins seemed more silky in structure and the wine had a nice balance from start to finish. I felt like the finish actually got a little thicker and had a hint of a creamy component.

I didn’t get much from the nose, only the smell of alcohol. Sometimes I feel like that is all I smell in some wines, and then sometimes, a wine will come along where I can distinctly pick out smells, with no alcohol lingering at all.

I didn’t like drinking the wine while eating my chili, because it seemed to have a bitter taste. After I finished eating my chili and allowed my mouth to cool off a bit, it tasted much better, as described above. Tommy enjoyed the wine with the chili.

I give it 88 points. As I am drinking it now, I feel like it has changed even more. It seems like it is getting even smoother. I prefer it not quite as smooth. Overall a nice wine for a nice dinner. I love wine.

Tommy and I have had this bottle of wine for about 6 months now. We had it at a restaurant with some friends and liked it enough to seek out a bottle at our local wine store. It has gotten lost in our inventory of wines because, well, it is a Rodney Strong Merlot. But tonight we wanted a light red and this one jumped out at Tommy. I wasn’t too thrilled to open it, but I also didn’t want to make any decisions tonight, so I was happy to have it. It was a nice surprise.

I would highly recommend seeking out this wine if you’re interested in a light bodied red wine. It had a silky texture and just tasted good. For those that do not drink wine very often, this wine would be a good wine to try. Tommy smelled a hint of cinnamon that quickly faded. The back of the bottle says “…plum and berry aromas, a toasty vanilla character, and a lingering finish”. I didn’t get the vanilla, but I definitely smelled the plums. It didn’t have a finish that jumped out at me as unique, but the wine from start to finish was well balanced.

We bought it at TotalWine for only $12. For $12, I think that this is an excellent value. I also think that this would be a good bottle to bring to someone else’s house, when bringing someone wine is necessary. I score it 89 points. It is a good example of a Merlot, but it didn’t have anything over the top to get the 90+ points. We drank it with our pork and risotto and it went well with both of those.

I like to analyze the wine that I drink at home not only for how it tastes, but also by the way that it got to our house. We have random wines that we bought, not knowing anything about except for what the back of the bottle says. We have wines that people have bought us as gifts, wine that we read about somewhere and just HAD to have it, and so on and so on. Sometimes these are the reasons that I pick out a particular bottle of wine to drink one night or another.

Tommy’s sister Elena bought us this bottle of wine for an anniversary gift. She went to England and Spain over the summer and went to the Torres winery in Spain. This bottle of wine traveled in a little wooden box all the way from Spain to Charleston. Her story of running here and there trying to catch trains and then planes while dragging a suitcase and carrying a wooden box with six wines in it was rather humorous.

This wine was a very nice Cabernet. I would say that if you’re looking for a Cab to drink, this was a very good example of a delicious Cabernet. It smelled and tasted of sour cherries. The finish had that big fruity bang of a finish that good Cabernets have. We opened the bottle and let it sit for about 90 minutes before we started drinking it. It went well on its own and also with our steaks that we ate.

I’ve been trying to rate the wines that I drink on a 100-point scale. Tommy has been doing this and records his ratings in our Cellar Tracker. I usually agree on the score that he gives a wine, but every once in a while we differ. We both agreed that this wine deserves 89 points. While it was a very good Cabernet, it didn’t have anything remarkable about it that would have pushed it to the 90 points.

This wine comes from the Yadkin Valley area of North Carolina. I have forgotten what a “typical” Merlot tastes like (if there is such a thing as typical), so I can’t say if it was a good Merlot or not. I can say that I liked it though. It was pretty full of oak, but not too over-the-top with the oak. I don’t seem to taste (or recognize) when red wines have oak, but this was very apparent. I liked that it didn’t have too much funkiness going on. Tommy didn’t like this wine, which is great for me because I know that I have 1/2 bottle of it in the refrigerator that we will not be competing for.

We drank this wine with meatloaf and belgian endive and it went very well with the flavors that were in the meatloaf. Neither the wine nor the food was competing with each other or my palate.