Wine Life - Houston

This year to celebrate  Rosé  Day, I opened a bottle of the  2014 Domaine Suffrene Bandol Rosé. Every summer, this seems to be one of my favorite wines. I have repeatedly recommended it in Galveston Monthly magazine. I had the pleasure of visiting the winery in 2012 and meeting winemaker/owner Cedric Gravier and his dog, Gaston. You can read more about that day by clicking here . The  2014 vintage is a dry,  medium  body rosé with aromas and flavors of ripe mixed berries, apricot and grapefruit with a bit of herbs, refreshing acidity and a long mineral finish. Its a fantastic wine to enjoy by itself poolside and it is even more delicious with simply grilled fish.  Elegant as always, the perfect wine for summer and, again, a highly recommended wine. The b lend consists of 40% Mourvedre, 30% Cinsault, 20% Grenache and 10% Carignan from 40-70 year old vines that sit in  sandy silt soils over limestone and clay . Though the vineyard and win...

An issue with my outdoor grill has forced me back into my kitchen this summer which is not my favorite place to cook in the Houston summertime. Unable to cook outside along with the need for a large family dinner meant that I was slow roasting a pork shoulder inside. Since I wasn't just throwing some hamburgers on the grill, I had to start early which gave me time to stare into my wine "cellar" fridge and contemplate what I wanted to open. I also needed a little bit of wine to add into the roasting pan. This bottle of  2007 Tenuta Castelbuono Montefalco Sagrantino seemed the perfect choice. I popped it open and poured myself a taste. It was big, it was powerful and it had a higher level of tannins than most of the wines that I've been enjoying lately. I poured a quarter cup over my roast, decanted the rest and then re-poured it into the bottle. I then put it back in my wine fridge to keep it at cellar temperature until dinner. I also picked out some other light...

The Wine Rendezvous Grand Tasting & Chef Showcase  was held at the Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel and Convention Center last Saturday evening. This annual event is one of the best consumer wine and food events held in the greater Houston area every year.  This year more than 2,500 wine and food lovers tasted their way through imaginative dishes and hundreds of wines while chefs representing nearly 60 restaurants competed for  Wine & Food Week's Waterford Crystal Chef of Chefs  award.    The competition was intense and the impressive culinary creations were not to be missed. While guests sipped and tasted, Chef Robert Del Grande of RDG was inducted into the Wine & Food Week Chef of Chefs Hall of Fame. He  was Houston's first James Beard Award winner in 1992.  Kris Jakob, the executive chef of Culinary Institute LeNôtre, took top honors as the 2015 Waterford Crystal Ch...

This bottle of  50 Harvests Meritage Napa Valley Red Wine 2012   was a media sample that I received last fall in a half bottle size. It had dropped to the back of my large wine fridge where it had, unfortunately, gotten lost and forgotten with some bottles being saved for long term storing. During a clean-up/rearranging session, I recently discovered it.  While working at home, I decided to open it up with a takeout burger that was topped with sauteed onions, mushrooms and Swiss cheese. Yes, I usually eat much lighter than that during the day but I was staying home, my husband was out of town for a few days and I was living in yoga pants. My schedule was actually the writer's schedule that everyone suspects that I have all the time. Anyway, back to the wine. This was a wine that I could easily have believed was Napa Valley or Bordeaux in a blind tasting; I would have gone back and forth when having to fill in that blank spot. Intense aromas of ripe blackberry, viole...

I purchased this bottle of Spicewood Vineyards Tempranillo 2012 sourced from the Texas High Plains at the winery last summer during a trip to Austin. It was one of my favorites that I tasted that day so I bought a few bottles to take home. It is 92% Tempranillo and 8% Cabernet Sauvignon and it was aged in 30% new American Oak and 70% neutral oak barrels for 12 months. My daughter was away studying abroad in Spain for most of the spring and had returned with some saffron for me and a request for me to make paella. After a hectic May, I finally got around to it last Wednesday night. I opted to open this Texas Tempranillo to see how it was holding up and let her compare some of Texas' finest with what she had been drinking in Spain, the home of Tempranillo wines.  I am pleased to report that it was even better than I remembered. The Spicewood Vineyards Texas High Plains Tempranillo 2012 had pronounced aromas of ripe raspberry and blackberry with baking spice, it was dry with mod...

As originally seen in the June issue of Galveston Monthly magazine

Read the full article at   Edible Houston Magazine From the the May /June edition  Subscribe now or pick up your copy at Whole Foods or Revival Market Read the full article at   Edible Houston  Magazine