Fat Bastard Cabernet Sauvignon, Five Rivers Pinot Noir, Domaine Ste Michelle

This whole life thing keeps getting in the way of my ability to blog about our wine adventures. My boss got a new boss, which means that my job changed, which means that all the work that I’ve been working on is irrelevant, which means that I have a whole new laundry list to focus on, which means that I work later than normal, which means that, today for example, I estimate that I wrote about 4,000 lines of code. This will drive one to drink. It has.
Accordingly, Treasa’s new job, while going very well, takes up more than a few minutes of her day. Add in the hour each way commute, and I’m (still) left (sometimes) doing most of the household chores. Please note the half made bed in the background of the picture.

It was all I could to do prevent Treasa from throwing away these bottles before I could take a picture of them. Now, while my meatballs are marinating (Yes, I marinate my meatballs), I have the ability to finally blog. Ta, da!

Fat Bastard cabernet sauvignon: If I remember correctly, we had this with a good pair of steaks. Treasa and I fought over the last half glass. This obviously isn’t the best glass of wine ever, but for ~$10, it’s one that, like a Bob Seger album, should be experienced more than it is.

Five Rivers Winery California pinor noir: I liked this more than Treasa did. It was above average without food. We paired it with a hearty pasta dish which over matched it a bit.

Domaine Ste Michelle champagne: By this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if they sent us a holiday card. I had left over bratwurst, which was all sorts of amazing. Treasa thought to pair it with champagne. Somewhat weird. But that’s the story.

Little Black Dress Pinot Noir 2008

A week ago, when my parental units came to visit for Treasa’s bridal shower, they brought two frozen t-bones. By the way, our dining room has more boxes from Crate and Barrel than the Crate and Barrel warehouse. I did get in ‘trouble’ this morning for using my
Lodge grill press to make a whole wheat pita burger for breakfast. Apparently, you’re only supposed to use shower presents after you get married. But, eff those rules. My grandmother gave the grill press to Treasa for the shower because she knew that it was really a gift for me anyway…so therefore, no infraction took place. Well, today being Saturday, mid-80’s, sunny, on Memorial Day weekend, it seemed like a good time to thaw the steaks out and char them over the grill.

I put the meat cubes into a worchesterershireerier sauce, beer, salt and garlic power marinade to thaw out. A few hours later, when the roasted potatoes were almost finished on the grill, with jalapeno peppers as the new ingredient to the skillet, and the steaks were tossed to the propane fueled inferno.

We didn’t really have a good robust steak-ready wine on hand, so Treasa played Russian Roulette with the pinot noirs. She chose the Little Black Dress pinot noir. Shoot. Wrong link. She chose the Little Black Dress pinot noir. It was light on the palette and easy to drink and was great while the meat was finishing. We thought that it would pick up a little bit of flavor once the steak was served, but it didn’t. By no means did it turn like other wines do when you introduce (the wrong) food, instead it just remained happy to play a supporting role to the meal without calling attention to itself whatsoever. I’m going to tag it in the sub-$10 range, but it could have been a dollar or so more. I don’t quite remember.

If you notice the glasses in the picture, we tried non-breakable stemware we got from the local grocery store for $2.99 each. They’re not so bulbous to completely capture the aroma of a good red, but considering their durability and lack of dog foot impaling power should I happen to break one with a grilling utensil, they seemed like a good buy. No flavor imparted into the wine. Sold. We’ll reuse these often.

And Treasa recognized the sacrifice I made when plating meals. I gave her the t-bone with the larger serving of filet mignon. Her's was also closer to the heavenly medium rare while mine was mundane medium-plus. My grillmanship was rewarded with a few choice forkfuls of her steak and, well, we just won’t go into the others…