Stefania’s is one of the many wine lists I’ve signed up for based on comments I’ve seen on forums like Wine Berserkers. All the fellow forumites would comment on how could the wines are, but at a very good price, so I thought I would give them a try. More importantly than the Quality Price Ratio, though, is that the owners of Stefania, Paul and Stefania, work really hard to develop a relationship with their customers. They regularly answer questions about their wines on the forums, and I even received a personal e-mail from them after my first purchase. Granted, it was because I screwed up the credit card number that I gave them with the order, but still…
Naturally, all of this isn’t to say that the wines take a back stage; they are superb! My notes:
Color: Purple with red tinges
Smell: Dark fruits at first, but with a finish of peppermints, herbs, and a bit of wood (cedar?).
Taste: Fairly intense flavors of fruit, with a refreshing acidity balanced by just the right amount of tannin. A little bit of wood toward the end.
And this was on day two! Stefania (at least in the last release) has one other Cab as well as a delicious Chardonnay. Try them all!
About a week and a half ago I received an e-mail from Bedrock Wine Co. announcing the upcoming release of their fall wines. I’ve been a member of Bedrock’s mailing list for the past year and a half or so, and have been very happily watching this new winery develop and gain more press and attention. To remind myself of just how good the wines are I decided to open this 2009 T Block Syrah, and I was very happy that I did. This wine can clearly benefit from quite a few more years of cellar time, but I actually enjoyed the youthful funk that flowed out of the bottle. The juice was an inky, opaque purple black, one of the darkest wines I’ve ever poured into a glass. This color corresponded nicely with the dark and funky scent emanating from the wine; I noted burning brush, meat, smoke, and barely any fruit at first. With a little air, the fruit came out and the funk receded a bit, revealing what will some day be a very nice, nuanced wine. On the tongue this wine had some initial sweetness, followed by the tight grip of tannins and even some bitterness. Once again, as with the nose of the wine, air time brought more dark fruits out on the palate. We had no trouble finishing the whole bottle that night, it was quite the treat. I definitely recommend getting on this mailing list before it’s too late!
This recipe came from Scott Beattie’s Artisinal Cocktails, a book dedicated to cocktails that emphasize seasonal flavors. This one in particular highlights the fresh flavors of tomato and basil in a liquid version of a Caprese salad. To get the actual recipe I’ll let you check out Beattie’s book, but I will say that the key to the whole thing is the use of tomato water instead of tomato juice. Beattie has you shred up tomatoes and then slowly drain the water out of them through a sieve (I actually used a coffee filter). This results in a clear water that’s full of bright tomato flavors. In my opinion it makes the drink lighter, brighter, and more refreshing than tomato juice based cocktails like the Bloody Mary. Definitely give it a try!
I recently came across a recipe for a Blueberry Old Fashioned on Serious Eats, and, since I like nothing better than a good Old Fashioned, I thought I’d give it a try. Luckily blueberries are still in season here in Virginia (though, just barely), so I was able to pick up a box of them at the farmers’ market. The recipe includes:
-6 blueberries (I used 7 since my were a bit small)
-1/2 oz simple syrup
-1 1/2 oz bourbon (Old Knob Creek)
-1/2 oz lemon juice
-soda water
I muddled the blueberries together, added the simple syrup, bourbon, and lemon juice, stirred, and then topped it off with a few more blueberries and a generous pour of soda water. In fact my pour of soda may have been a bit too generous, as the drink generally tasted diluted and watery. Nothing too special in terms of flavor either, in my opinion. Still, given the 100+ temperature this week, at least it was cold and refreshing…
For those of you that occasionally need a break from the alcohol, here is an option that takes advantage of fresh summer produce and helps beat the heat. Taken from SimplyRecipes, this recipe makes a cucumber lime mint agua fresca that is quite tasty (despite the long name!). The recipe:
1 lb of cucumbers (about 2 big ones)
1/2 c lime juice
1 1/4 c mint leaves, removed from stem
1/2 c sugar
1 1/4 c water
I chopped up the cucumbers (leaving the skin on) and poured them and the rest of the ingredients into the blender. After blending I poured the resulting puree through a screen and refrigerated the resulting juice. Pour it in a ice filled glass and you have a very refreshing libation… it tastes pretty strongly of the cucumbers, but has a nice acidity from the limes and ends with a slight taste of mint. All-in-all not a bad way to keep the hangovers away!
Lately I have been reading a lot about shrubs, which, although they have varying meanings, are often defined as a combination of fruit, sugar, and vinegar. While vinegar may seem like a very odd cocktail ingredient, I’ve found that shrubs can be fairly versatile in that they add both sweet (fruit/sugar) and sour (vinegar) elements to a cocktail. While Serious Eats has excellent instructions for shrubs, I tried my own variations to make both a raspberry shrub and a strawberry shrub. The raspberry:
1 part red and black raspberries
1 part sugar
1 part vinegar
I crushed 1 part raspberries and added them, along with 1 part sugar, to a bowl. I let this rest for one day in the refrigerator and then added 1 part vinegar (a combination of balsamic and red wine vinegar in this case). I then strained this into a bottle and threw it into the refrigerator to age for a bit. While the shrub should be tasty right away, a few days/weeks will help the vinegar mellow a bit and integrate with the other flavors. The strawberry recipe follows the essentially the same recipe:
1 part strawberries
1 part sugar
1 part vinegar (in this case, a mix of apple cider and white wine vinegar)
The methodology is the same for making the strawberry version. Now that you have the shrub, you might be wondering what you should do with it. Thus far I have found two cocktails that are very easy but also delicious. First, a sparkling wine cocktail which is simply a mix of 1/2 to 1 oz of shrubs (I liked 1 oz of the raspberry version) and a few dashes of bitters, added to a champagne glass and then topped with sparkling wine. It looks great with a black raspberry as garnish:
For my second cocktail, I essentially replaced simple syrup with the strawberry shrub in an Old Fashioned. I added 1 oz of the strawberry shrub to 3 oz of Knob Creek bourbon and a few dashes of Angostura bitters, then stirred with a few ice cubes and added lemon peel:
The shrubs adds a nice tartness to the whiskey, along with a delicious strawberry flavor. I will definitely continue to experiment with this exquisite ingredient!
One of the great reasons to look forward to summer is the fresh produce available at local farmers’ markets, and not only for the delicious meals that they make possible. Many farmers’ market products also make great ingredients for fresh cocktails! This morning at my local market I came across some vivid purple basil and remembered a recipe I had recently come across that called for it. I just couldn’t resist… to be honest I have always been a bit afraid of adding savory herbs to drinks, but the idea also intrigued me quite a bit. Upon returning home I did a quick search and came up with the following recipe for a Basil Whiskey Cocktail:
1/4 oz sugar
1/2 oz lemon juice
Handful of purple basil leaves
3 oz bourbon (Knob Creek for me)
First I combined the sugar and the lemon juice, stirring them together. I then added the purple basil and muddled it. Finally, I poured in the bourbon, shook everything together, and poured it in an ice filled glass. For garnish I used a lemon peel and a few more basil leaves. Despite my original skepticism, this turned out to be quite good. The bourbon integrated very nicely with the basil, which wasn’t too overpowering but does add a savory component to the drink. The lemon also added a nice acidity to the mix, which I thought was critical to the overall balance of the drink. Next time I might add a little less sugar, as the drink seemed a tad bit too sweet to me. Regardless, this is a very nice drink for summer sipping! And very nice looking too:
Now that it’s almost officially summer, I need to start exploring more light, refreshing cocktails. That means moving away from my scotches and bourbons and beginning to look at gin and tequila… and if I can squeeze a little Aperol in there, all the better! Just the other day I came across the Two-One-Two on Serious Eats and thought I’d give it a try. It’s a simple combination of tequila, Aperol, and grapefruit juice:
-1 1/2 oz reposado tequila (Don Julio reposado)
-3/4 oz Aperol
-3/4 oz grapefruit juice (I used Simply Grapefruit, which was actually pretty good, but I’m sure it would be better with freshly squeezed juice)
This one was delicious; the grapefruit juice really showcased the flavor of the tequila, and the Aperol added just the right amount of sweet and bitter complexity. I bet it would be nice with a smoky mezcal too!
After a long hiatus, I am finally getting back to blogging a little bit about all of the tasty drinks I encounter on a daily basis. The other night I felt like opening up a nicer wine, so I reached for a 2008 Williams Selyem Eastside Road Neighbors Pinot Noir. In the past we have enjoyed just about every Williams Selyem pinot that we have come across, and this one received pretty good reviews as well. Bob Cabral, head winemaker at Williams Selyem, described a taste profile that includes berries, game, minerality, and dark chocolate, and CellarTracker reviews add additional intriguing notes like earth and barnyard (yum!). Unfortunately, I didn’t notice that Cabral also cautioned to have some patience with this wine… no doubt I should have waited on it, or at least decanted it instead of popping and pouring. I think the wine was a bit shut down for my tasting:
Color: A dark cranberry red; very nice, clear color.
Smell: At first I detected a bit of smoke and wood, with a bit of alcohol heat. With more swirling I got more fruit, some vanilla, and perhaps a hint of meat/game.
Taste: At first I could only taste a bit of red fruit that really didn’t last very long at all; it was very closed down and a bit disappointing. However, given about 3 hours in the open bottle, tastes of raspberries and blackberries became much more vibrant, and a definite acidity extended itself throughout the palate. By the end of the bottle I even got a bit of the dark chocolate that Cabral mentions in his tasting notes.
So, this wine has some definite potential, but it’s not quite there yet. Luckily I have another bottle!
Happy National Margarita Day! In honor of the occasion I broke out Tequila by Joanne Weir. After leafing through the pages for awhile, I opted for the Jalisco Old Fashioned, a tequila version of one of my favorite cocktails. It is made by stirring together:
2 ounces tequila
1/4 ounce agave nectar
2 dashes Angostura bitters
1 orange twist
I opted to swap in a lime peel for the orange twist, and I also added a maraschino cherry (I’ve been on a bit of a Luxardo cherry kick lately… they are delicious and so much better than your usual maraschino cherry). The result wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t really as good as a traditional margarita. It was a bit too sweet, without the acidic twist that comes from a splash of lime juice. However, it was nicely aromatic and did a decent job of showcasing my tequila. Worth a try, if only once.
Stefania’s is one of the many wine lists I’ve signed up for based on comments I’ve seen on forums like Wine Berserkers. All the fellow forumites would comment on how could the wines are, but at a very good price, so I thought I would give them a try. More importantly than the Quality Price Ratio, though, is that the owners of Stefania, Paul and Stefania, work really hard to develop a relationship with their customers. They regularly answer questions about their wines on the forums, and I even received a personal e-mail from them after my first purchase. Granted, it was because I screwed up the credit card number that I gave them with the order, but still…
