Mid-June Posting

Happy Father's Day! Hope everyone took some time today to enjoy their dads. We took Daryl out for Italian food (and I tried a nice Chianti), and otherwise, we relaxed.

Austin was all work, and unfortunately, we never had time to check out the music scene. It was a productive visit, however, and in a few weeks, we should know where we are going next. We did get out one night to eat dinner downtown with some friends, but other than that, the airport Hilton treated us very well. On our last night, we checked out their wine list--not too bad! Daryl found a NZ SB, which was very good, and I tried a Texas Chenin Blanc, light and crisp. You can read about Texas wines here.

This weekend's wine is a delicious Napa Cab: Twenty Bench 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon. Great, great Cab--rich, smooth, nice! Daryl grilled flatiron steaks, and Del made fried rice and stir-fried veggies with chicken. Twenty Bench is an excellent value at around $20, if you purchase it directly from the winery (see the website for details). We'll look for this one again.

As we anticipate moving in about six weeks, we're going into the back of our wine cooler, finding wines we don't even remembering buying, it's been so long. We'll be opening some of these bottles in the next few weeks, and we're looking forward to trying them.

Ohio WineFest

It was a hot and muggy day; thunderstorms threatened but never arrived, and we're hoping for cooler weather. We got out to the Ohio WineFest and despite the noon heat, enjoyed ourselves as much as we did last June. Daryl's mom arrived safely yesterday, so she brought the kids through the market, treating them to stuffed animals and Popsicles, while the two of us tried Ohio wines.

So many different wineries. Some from our area, the Miami Valley. Others from closer to Cincinnati and the Ohio River. And quite a few from the Grand River Valley in the north. Like we wrote last year, many of these wineries offered samples of sweeter stuff, like fruit and ice wines, even mead! We passed on those. Daryl stuck to dry white and reds, while I ventured to the slightly sweeter side, opting to try a blush and a raspberry-infused Riesling. That was good! (Daryl, however, was not impressed.)

Overall, we liked almost everything we tried but still found some of the wines to be on the syrupy, sweeter side when we didn't expect them to be. Our one complaint was that some of the wineries hadn't chilled their sample wines; I tried a warm Chardonnay, which probably would have been decent had it not been as warm as it was (we were pushing close to 85 degrees outside!).

We didn't take tasting notes, but the following is a list of the wineries we "visited":

Miami River Valley:
The Winery at Versailles: Daryl loved their Petite Sirah, and I thought their blush was tasty.

Ohio River Valley/Cincinnati:
Kinkead Ridge Vineyard and Estate Winery: Their Revelation wine is a crisp blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon.

Woodstone Creek Winery & Distillery: They offered mead and also distill small batch spirits (not available to taste).

Amish Country
Breitenbach Wine Cellars

Grand River Valley/Northern Ohio
Debonne Winery

Ferrante

Maize Valley Market & Winery

I wish I wrote down which winery sold that raspberry Riesling!

It was a great couple of hours...spent some time in the market afterwards to pick up fresh-baked bread, Amish cheese and cookies.

For more information on Ohio wines, see here.

We'll be in Austin, Texas, next weekend for work. If we have time, we'll try to check out the scene. We hear there's great music.

Cheers!