North Mountain Vineyard Tom’s Brook Red

Treasa and I went to Miranda and Larz’s house for dinner Friday night. They made the lasagna, I brought the garlic bread and, knowing me, a bottle of wine. The night was impromptu. The lasagna was Stouffers and the garlic bread was whatever was on sale in the frozen aisle of the grocery store. Factory processed marginally ok to eat consistency, but never a bad, inedible meal.

So for the wine, it wasn’t the focus of the night, so why open something I expected to be good? For the last few months, I’ve had this bottle of red hanging out in the wine rack. I knew nothing about it, other than it said ‘table red.’ It was part of a wine centric gift package from Treasa’s aunt for her bridal shower. Without stirring up much family dirt, I didn’t have high hopes for it (which is why it’s been sitting around for the last few months), so it found it’s way over into a lasagna pairing.

Actual text message to Miranda during the evening’s planning process:
Treasa’s aunt gave us a shitty bottle of red. I’ll share it with you guys. :-)

Well, the wine, which after finally reading the label ended up being a North Mountain Vineyard Tom’s Brook Red didn’t resemble fecal matter after all. In fact, it was pretty good. Here’s the website’s description:
A lightly sweet Cabernet Franc. Enjoy the fruitiness and full structure, along with a lightly sweet finish. Try with barbecued venison, or a honey glazed ham.

Good thing we opened it 30 minutes before the lasagna came out of the oven. It gave us a chance to enjoy it before we paired it with food, which, from the blurb above, just didn’t work well.

Moral of the story: You can’t judge a wine by it’s label, or more pertinent, you can’t judge a wine by the sanity of the person who gave it to you as a gift. Treasa and I are more of dry red type of folk, but if a good, slightly sweet finishing red is up your alley, I’d recommend buying Tom’s Brook Red.