A Couple of Quick Food Pairing Notes

Successful food- wine pairings.  Quick note.

Steak Bomb Calzone & even some Hawaiian Pizza: 2008 Pennywise Pinot Noir.
wine: soft fruit, rounded, a little earthy yet kinda light.  I figured it would probably work with the steak but was unsure about the tricky sweet-sour nature of the Hawaiian Pizza but it worked well.  There was enough earthy but smooth nature of the wine to still work with the Hawaiian side after the sweetness canceled out.




Roasted Pork Loin with (roasted) garlic: 2008 Irony Pinot Noir: the wonderful, almost magical alchemy that happens in a synergetic pairing.  As an aperitif the wine was tart, either sour cherry or cranberry viewpoint depending.  With the pork, the wine became deeper, fuller.  Apres dinner, over talk even with hours of aeration in the glass, the wine still retained a nice rounded, full, nature.

Aruma 2010

My new Go-To?  The available vintage of my GoTo Bogle Phantom is almost up.  Aruma is deep, rich, also wonderful...maybe not quite as rhapsodic but close enough for less $$.

Many Malbecs I have experienced have a rough edge that some aging softens.  This one does not.  This one is roll your eyes up in your head, curl your toes wonderful as is.

Deep color, deep aroma & dark cherry, rich flavors.  Wonderful partnership between Lafitte and Catena.  Great value.

I tried the new vintage, the latest bottled vintage of K-BZinfandel...what a disappointment.  Maybe age will deepen it but right now it doesn't begin to capture a fraction of the wonderful depth of the previous vintage.   It looks like I may be drinking a lot of the Aruma until summer whites take over again.