All Things Foodie

Another night another wine! Today's tasting is a 2003 Merlot, Echelon Central Coast from the Echelon Vineyards in CA. Our favorite wine store owner wanted to know what we thought of this one. We liked it! It is a thousand times better than the white wine we had last night. Well maybe not a thousand times, but maybe 900 times better... The Echelon Merlot was a nice deep cherry color with a pleasant, very cherry taste. Nice balance with medium tannin, and lingered on my tongue nicely with a long finish. I give it a 10 plus tongue roll because the flavor was still there after that many clicks to the roof of my mouth. On the bottle it states that it has a cocoa flavor but I had a hard time picking that out. I did try a piece of 70% dark chocolate from Guylian to see how it held up with it and bingo! It went well with chocolate and that's one of my favorite things to note especially if I'm going to be ordering a wine out at dinner. I really like my red wines to have the

I really needed to get going on this wine and foodie blog. Tonight is the night. I'm going to start right at the bottom with a really, and I mean really, inexpensive wine I picked up at a local wine store recently. For $3.99 (I wasn't kidding about the el cheapo price) in the end cap isle, was a bottle of Goat Door, 2005 Chardonnay from South Africa. Now I have to tell you, I was eating a bowl of cauliflower covered in a dried Indian curry mixed spice mix when I took the first sip. The familiar oakiness of a Chardonnay jumped out at me, made me smile, and I thought I had a winner at $3.99 a bottle. Nevertheless, that feeling didn't last long. The curry actually helped the taste along but when I was sipping the wine alone the flavors took on their own character when not in competition with the curry. I continued to taste the oakey flavor which I do indeed like. I also got a silky, buttery, feeling from the wine which I also like. There just seemed to be a sour