Leaping Horse Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 California

I will confess I'd never heard of either Leaping Horse or their parent label, Iron Stone Vineyards, located in Lodi, California. This is a family winery, and a product of the Kautz family Vineyards. John Kautz begin as a grape supplier, growing wine grapes on twelve acres in Lodi. Today the Kautz family owns several thousand acres of vineyards in Lodi, and California Sierra Foothills. The Leaping Horse wines (Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel, Shiraz, Merlot, and Chardonnay) are from a single vineyard.

In the glass Leaping Horse Cabernet

Sauvignon is a very deep red, verging on purple. Even though we let the bottle rest for twenty minutes or so, there was almost no initial aroma. The basic impression in terms of taste is blackberry, with a hint of oak. This is a light bodied wine, and barely coats the glass. Although I'd describe this as a more delicate Cabernet Sauvigion, it would do well with salads, say a spinach and bacon salad. The bacon and the Leaping Horse Cabernet Sauvignon would complement each other, without one overwhelming the other. This is another easy, drinkable wine, the sort of thing you might grab from the shelf when you've spontaneously invited the neighbor over for dinner.

We picked up this bottle as an impulse buy at one of those little gas station stores that was reducing inventory. It's a typical 13.5 ABV, and was a bargain price at $4.99 for a wine that usually seems to fall in the $7.00 to 10.00 range. I suspect that they're discontinuing or reducing inventory, since I'm seeing it priced online anywhere from 4.00 to 11, for the same wine.

Crane Lake Wines Part I: The White Wines

Crane Lake is very much a budget table wine label. It's one of Frank Franzia's labels, part of his Classic California group, and owned by Bronco, best known as the makers of Charles Shaw wines, the "Two Buck Chuck" wines sold exclusively through Trader Joe's. I've been seeing Crane Lake at the local RiteAid at two bottles for $7.00, and I have to confess, I turned my nose up, after a less than positive experience with Charles Shaw wines. All of the Crane Lake wines (but not Crane Lake Down Under) are California wines.

After such a surprisingly pleasant experience with the Crane Lake Nouveau Table Red, we decided to hunt down and try as many of the Crane Lake Varietals as we could. Overall I've been impressed. I'm not going to stop drinking Meridian, or Columbia Crest, or even Sutter Home, but these are fun wines at budget prices—I'd even describe some of them as bargains.

This is the first in a series of two parts. You can find Part II on the Crane Lake red wines here.

Crane Lake Whites

Crane Lake Chardonnay 2007

This is a slightly more golden color than I expected; that is, it is more gold than yellow. The bouquet is classic Chardonnay. In taste, this is very much a California Chardonnay, pleasantly oaky, mild, but none of the buttery quality you sometimes notice. A little astringent, but there are hints of pear and something that's slightly citrusy. It's very muted, really, and it seems almost watery.

Crane Lake Sauvignon Blanc 2007

This is a very pale gold, with a citrus hint in the aroama. The taste is slightly mineral, with citrus, more lime than lemon, and a hint of sweet melon. This is a sweet rather than a dry Sauvignon blanc. It is, much like the other Crane Lake wines, oddly muted; it's pleasant but I'd describe it as more mellow than I'm accustomed to, less herbacious or sour apple, for instance.

You can find Part II on the Crane Lake red wines here.

Crane Lake Wines Part II: The Red Wines

This is the second part of a two part series on Crane Lake wines; this one is on the Red wines. The first part was on the white wines, and you can find it here. Crane Lake is a budget tier table wine, one of the Bronco wine labels owned by Frank Franzia, part of his Classic California group. Bronco is best known as the makers of Charles Shaw wines, the "Two Buck Chuck" wines sold by Trader Joe's. These are all California wines.

Crane Lake Reds

Crane Lake Cabernet Sauvignon 2006

In a glass, the wine is an attractive garnet red, but the color and the aroma both make me suspect that it's not 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. Blackberry on the nose. The taste is fruity, but with a bit of an edge, not jammy at all. The label is completely uninformative though, so I have no idea. This is a rather gentle Cabernet Sauvignon, quieter than either the California Meridian Cabernet Sauvignon, which is more oaky than this, or the Australian AU Cabernet Sauvignons. I wonder if this subdued, muted quality is the result of blending bulk wines from various vines and wineries? The ABV is 12.96.

Crane Lake Zinfandel 2006

We picked this up out of sheer curiosity at the local co-op, since we've been trying Crane Lake wines. The co-op is usually rather snotty about wine, favoring imports over North American wineries, and varietals over blends, so seeing Crane Lake on the shelves was a surprise. This is a robust and peppery Zinfandel. A massive, hearty wine, that reminds me very much of Chinese spiced dried plums. My first thought was that it was like the Riunite Lambrusco of the early 1980s. It's a fun wine, and quite quaffable. It's got the peppery, spicy quality of Zinfandel but it's a bit sweeter, and fruitier than the California Sutter Home Zinfandel. A few friends could easily kill two or three bottles over a couple of shared pizzas, and honestly, it's just about perfect for that.

Crane Lake Merlot 2007

Love dark red with ruby highlights. Plum and blackberry on the nose. Fruit very much dominates the flavor, with none of the slightly bitter dark cocoa or coffee I have noticed in other Merlots. It's a lovely color, but the wine strikes me, somewhat oddly as thin, or muted. The wine in the glass doesn't adhere to the glass much; there's less streaking than I'd expect. Once again, the label is so very very uninformative that I don't really know what's in the bottle—but I suspect it's not all Merlot. It's a very smooth, mellow, even silky, wine. I think I might describe this as a Merlot for people who think they don't like Merlot.

Crane Lake Sangiovese 2008

The aroma is fruity, and a

bit like ripe strawberries. In the glass this is a dark crimson with ruby highlights. In flavor, it's far less fruity than the aroma would suggest, and noticeably dry. There's a bit of the spicy quality I associate with Zinfandel, but this is more oaky and drier by far. This is what people who don't like red wine think red wine tastes like, and I can see why Sangiovese is so often used in blends. This is not a wine to drink on its own. This is a wine that needs food, but that pays off in the pairing. We liked it quite a bit though, and are thinking about what to pair it with.

There's a lot about Bronco Wines that I find problematic. I admit to being completely confused by a long list of labels that seem to be in the same tier. I also admit that I'm more than a little suspicious that a number of the labels are more about branding than the wine in the bottles, and that the bottle contents are the same, but that's quite possibly just me being cynical about branding and globalization. I think some of Bronco's business practices are iffy, but I admire Frank Franzi's work ethic and refusal to engage in wine snobbery. I also admire Franzia's operating assumption that wine is to be enjoyed, now, with food, as a regular part of life. It reminds me of the attitude of friends of mine who live in Tuscany and the French countryside, where small wineries make wine for local and immediate consumption.

The Beer-Tasting Challenge

When I was a kid, my mom gave us the Pepsi challenge. I was sure that I would pick Pepsi since I was a member of the Pepsi generation, but strangely  and embarrassingly enough, picked RC cola over either Pepsi or Coke.

In preparation for an upcoming party, I decided that I definitely needed to have another challenge. Since most of my friends prefer beer to pop, I thought a beer challenge would definitely be the way to go.

What you need:

  • Massive amounts of little dixie cups
  • 12 different types of beer, maybe 3 cheap brands (I suggest Coors, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Budweiser), 3 Amber Ales, 3 Pilsners, and 3 Dark Beers
  • Paper Bags for each of the Beers
  • Score Cards for Rating each Beer


To keep things simple, set up 4 stations for each type of beer.  Each beer should be put in a bag and labeled in an alphabetical fashion. (a,b,c,d and so on. Hopefully, you don’t get so wasted that you can’t remember the alphabet.)

Divide your fellow beer connoisseurs into 4 groups. The idea is for the groups to rotate to each station. Once at the station, pour Beer A into 4 Dixie cups. Everyone will ooh and ah over the beer and fill out the score card. Repeat with the other two beers and move to the next station.

The challenge is to keep the beer organized as you consume more beer.
For a beer scoring sheet, you can check out this link.

The Coolest Playing Cards Ever

Drinking and cards go hand in hand. Whether you are playing drinking games and accidentally end up wearing a chicken hat, or whether you are playing for a high stakes poker game while pretending that you are in Las Vegas, you’re going to want cards that do not get wet on the table.

These cards are not only clear (as in you can see through them), they are plastic and incredibly cool. They are made by “Bicycle”, which as far as I know has no correlation with bicycles.

Pictures after the jump.


What Do You Do When You Accidentally Crash a Dinner Party?

I crashed a dinner party on New Year’s. Pretty impressive, huh? It wasn’t on purpose and I did apologize as I sat on the couch nibbling on the left-overs while watching six 20-somethings eat and make polite conversation while they pretended to either be from the movie Barcelona or “Sex and the City”.

It happened like this.

Our friend was here from out of town and our mutual friends came over to drink some with us. Two beers turned into three, and three beers turned into four, and suddenly one of our friends felt sorry for us invited us to her friend’s dinner party. We protested, but not really that much, imagining that a dinner party was supposed to be casual, which by very definition it is not.

We drove over to the party, knocked on the door, and a very frazzled and very pretty young hostess greeted us with a hidden “WTF is happening?” in her eyes. It was pretty apparent that we were not the honored guests at the party and were in fact, not invited to this very private and very formal little dinner party at all.

The three of us walked to the couch and hunkered down with our Session beer. The friends who invited us gave us the food that was intended for them, or at least that I what I came to believe later. I tried not to watch them eat, but had the strange feeling that I was watching the imitation of a dinner party because the reality that of my situation had not quite hit me yet, more than likely because of the beer I drank before I got there.

After what seemed like an immeasurable amount of time, the eating portion of the dinner party wound down and the guys came over to say hello while the women cleaned up the kitchen. Again, I was faced with a dilemma. Should I stay and try to make chit-chat with the guys or should I help clear the table for a meal I didn’t eat?

I chose neither option and instead made a move for the bathroom where I compared myself rather unfavorably to the young fashionable women in the kitchen. I then introduced myself, but was too stupid and too embarrassed to really apologize for crashing the party in the first. Abruptly, the hostess announced that she was off to dance in twenty minutes and that we were all invited to come if we wanted to, which I thought was overly generous given the circumstances.

What should I have done? Should we have immediately left? (Keep in mind that we had no car, no place to go, and it was New Year’s, which is not the best time to get a taxi.) Should we have asked for a bus schedule and been on our merry little way?

Crane Lake Red Table Wine Nouveau 2009 California

I've been seeing Crane Lake wines at the local RiteAid for three or four months now, at the bargain price of two bottles for $7.00. I confess that, after a less than stellar experience with Charles Shaw, I turned up my nose. But when this interestingly honest label turned up at the local Bargain Grocery Outlet, well, for $3.99, I figured why not?

Crane Lake Winery is owned by Frank Franzia of Bronco Winery. Bronco is best known for Charles Shaw "Two Buck Chuck" wines. Bronco owns a number of other labels as well, many of which have been appearing at local Trader Joe's and Bargain

Grocery Outlets. Bronco, you may recall, is a bulk wine producer. They have their own vines, but principally, they buy excess wine from other wineries, blend, and bottle them, and put one of twenty or so labels on them. Crane Lake in particular has gone after the varietal table wine market, producing Moscato, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer, Malbec, Merlot, Pinot Grigio, Pinot Noir, Petite Sirah, Riesling, Sangiovese, Sauvignon Blanc, Shiraz, and Zinfandel. I note as well that Crane Lake has imported Australian Chardonnay, in bulk, blended "finished" and bottled it here, slapped on a label featuring a koala, distributed it primarily via Trader Joe's—and received some startlingly good press from The Wall Street Journal, and wine bloggers alike—for a $3.00 to $4.00 bottle of wine.

I've written about Beaujolais Nouveau, and about how it was a celebratory drink-it-now sort of wine. While "Red Table Wine" doesn't map to Beaujolais, with or without the "Noveau" label this is very much that kind of wine. There's something delightful about a wine label that frankly declares itself so unabashedly as "Nouveau," and "Red Table Wine," with a 2009 date. It's a full, fruity, joyful sort of wine, young, but also fresh and quite quaffable (it is, in other words very much the sort of wine upon which you'd expect a "Nouveau" label). It's a lovely color, purple with pronounced ruby highlights in the light, and quite fresh and fruity on the nose. This is very much meant to enjoyed now, right now, with food and good friends and several bottles. According to the Web site, it's a blend of 58.31% Valdiguié, 23.25% Proprietor's Dry Red, 14.36% PS, 2.49% Cabernet Franc, and 1.59% Red Zinfandel. The ABV is 12.5%.

We'll be going back for another bottle, this one to share with friends on New Year's Eve, and, yes, I'll at least try one of the other Crane Lake Varietals. This is a budget wine at a bargain price (the retail price at $7.00 is still a good deal).

Champagne: Not Just for Drinking

With the holidays in full swing and everyone getting into holiday party mode, it's no doubt the lists for food and drinks to serve are growing rapidly. Champagne is one of those tried and true drinks, especially popular for toasting at the start of the new year. And while adding ingredients to this bubbly beverage can turn it various champagne cocktails, it may also be used in food recipes perfect for entertaining. Thanks to websites like epicurious.com (one of my favorite websites for recipes) you can find more uses for bubbly than just drinking. This tasty shrimp appetizer is surprisingly easy to make, delicious and beautiful when plated.

Marinated Shrimp with Champagne Beurre Blanc

Sauce Base:

2 cups Champagne, 1/3 cup finely chopped shallots, 2 tablespoons Champagne vinegar or other white wine vinegar and 1/4 teaspoon whole black peppercorns.

Shrimp:

1 cup Champagne, 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, 3 tablespoons minced shallots, 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, 24 extra-large uncooked shrimp (about 2 pounds), peeled with tail left intact and deveined, 1 tablespoon minced fresh chives, 1 tablespoon minced fresh tarragon and 1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley. Also needed are a nonstick cooking spray and 2 sticks of unsalted butter, chilled and cut into 16 pieces.

Preparation for Sauce:

Combine Champagne, shallots, vinegar, and peppercorns in heavy medium saucepan. Boil until reduced to 1/4 cup liquid, about 20 minutes.

Preparation for Shrimp:

Combine Champagne, olive oil, shallots, and ground pepper in resealable plastic bag. Add shrimp to bag and seal; shake bag to coat shrimp evenly. Marinate shrimp at room temperature at least 30 minutes and up to 1 hour, turning bag occasionally. Mix chives, tarragon, and parsley in small bowl. Preheat broiler. Spray broiler pan with nonstick vegetable oil spray. Drain shrimp; discard plastic bag with marinade. Arrange shrimp on prepared pan in single layer. Broil shrimp until just opaque in center, about 2 minutes per side. Stand 3 shrimp, tails upright, in center of each plate. Rewarm sauce base over medium-low heat. Whisk in butter 1 piece at a time allowing each to melt before adding the next (do not boil or sauce will separate). Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper then spoon around shrimp. Sprinkle with fresh herbs and serve.

 

Looking for something easy and more for passing around and getting the party started? How about those old reliable jello shots! Great for parties, easy to make and because the champagne is in the jello there's no need for all those glasses. Nice at the end of the night while doing dishes.

Jello Shots:

1 package jello (whichever flavor you prefer), 1 cup boiling water and 1 cup chilled champagne.

In a large bowl add jello powder to boiling water and stir until dissolved. After allowing to cool to room temperature, slowly add chilled champagne and stir. Pour into an ice cube tray and refridgerate until set. To remove the jello from the tray, dip trays in hot water for 5 seconds, running a knife around the shot to loosen. Place shots in a large serving bowl and serve with tongs.

Anyone else have any fun recipes that use champagne? Feel free to leave them in the comments, as I'm sure we'll need some uses for all the leftover bubbly form the holidays...Not that we wouldn't be just as happy to drink it, I'm sure.

 

 

The Perils of Drinking with Tightwads

It’s nice to drink with friends, but if the friends are Larry David-esque tightwads, it’s not necessarily so nice at the end of the evening. A few years ago, I found myself in the rather fortunate situation of having 20 or so people to go out and drink with on a semi-frequent basis. This was good for a number of reasons, but could get bad depending on who I had the pleasure (or terrible misfortune) of sitting next to as in the group because of body smells and bad conversations.  


The worst part of the evening always came at the end of the night when it was time to pay the tab. The particular establishment we frequented liked us all to pay together, which should have been no problem, right?


Wrong. There were always people who would strategically leave the table after consuming four beers, three shots of Jack Daniels, and one "Blow Job" and carelessly toss a tenner on the table to pay for their drinks, as if it would cover their entire bill. In that little group, there were also people who generously left without paying a dime, confident in the fact that the bill would somehow miraculously “get taken care of”.


By last call, half of us would be drunk off our asses.  We would have a ginormous tab, leaving the drunkest stragglers to try and determine who should pay what. The designated drivers would rightfully argue that it wasn’t necessary for them to leave thirty dollars for their two diet cokes, the rest of us would bicker amongst ourselves, and the waitress would stare at us with absolute hate in her eyes. Eventually, more of us would be coaxed into paying way more than our fair share, and the generous tips we would have normally left became negligible.  


The next day, the Facebook wars would start as the angrier members of our little motley group would try to rout out the cheapos. Sometimes it was a genuine mistake, but more often than not, it was the youngest guy at the table, who had somewhere along the way failed to learn the lesson that not all beer is free.

Once we singled him out, it was easy to get him on the straight and narrow. All it took were a few empty threats and the not-so-subtle theft of his Harry Potter book, which he carried around with him for reasons unknown.


Looking back, I am trying to figure out what we should have done to avoid the problem in the first place.

1800 Tequila's Cool Bottles

Sadly, a majority of my Tequila-drinking experience is limited to Tequila poppers as a college student or gulping cheap Margaritas on the rocks at Happy Hours across town. As a result,  I am not what anyone would consider to be a Tequila connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination. However, tasting tequila and admiring a beautiful piece of art are two completely different things; while I can’t vouch for the taste of 1800 Tequila, I’m giving their new bottle designs a two-thumbs up.


1800 Tequila recently commissioned nine artists to create new designs for their bottles. Each bottle will be a limited edition with only 1800 made. Ideally the limited edition bottles will reflect both the tastes (so to speak) of the individual artist and reflects our somewhat strange pop culture.  Check out their web-site if you want more details on where to find a bottle.  The bottles retail for $25 according to Wired Magazine, which would be  my absolute and total authority on anything related to drinking, if I actually drank anything more than the occasional micro-brew.  

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