huevos con vino

My friend Nadia, who lives in the Stellenbosch area of South Africa, sent me a few photos today.  Apparently the region is caught in the midst of wildfires; apparently they weren’t content to create wines like those of California, they wanted the natural disasters too.  How strange!

So, in Nadia’s honor, I drank a glass of Ken Forrester 2005 “Petit” Chenin Blanc with dinner at Ray’s Boathouse tonight.  One official review grants this wine 89 points, which is about 2-3 points too high…still, it’s a very nice and drinkable wine, especially considering the spate of lovely, warm weather here in Seattle.  Here’s what I wrote in my master spreadsheet of wines I’ve tried:

“Very light, golden color; smells of honey and wildflowers; tastes like grapefruit, with a nice, dry finish that doesn’t linger.  Quite refreshing, good with a salad.”

That salad was a great counterpart: butter lettuce, local blue cheese, raspberry vinegarette, almonds, and dried cranberries.  Terrific!

After dinner I had a glass of Clear Creek pear brandy, which I have wanted to try for a while.  I hear they use 28 pounds of fresh pears per bottle.  That’s a lot of pears!  You can certainly tell, too: the smell and taste of the pears in this brandy are exquisite.  As I described it to my fiance, “it’s like pears soaked in gasoline!”  She hates the strong stuff.

I want to try the Douglas Fir eau de vie that Clear Creek produces, but it’s $50 at the local liquor store…more within my means is the McCarthy’s single-malt whiskey.  That scotch/whiskey has received good reviews so far.  I guess it’s time to head back to south Seattle, once I get paid of course.

One of the interesting things I have discovered recently with wine shipments is that there is a small, but important, difference between UPS and FedEx.  UPS allows you to go online and change the shipment destination if you are the recipient and you won’t be home during business hours for a few days.  FedEx allows no such change. 

That means it’s much easier to use UPS and get the shipment redirected (for free, usually) to you at work…or, from work to home, depending on where you ship your wine.  I usually ship it to my home address but that’s not always very handy because I live in an apartment without a doorman, and the secure building access prevents the delivery person from leaving the wine inside my apartment.

In other words, I have to be home all day to have any hope of receiving my wine shipments.  That’s not possible, so I like the fact that UPS redirects the shipments free of charge.  That way, I can attempt one home delivery and hope for the best.  If I miss the delivery, I’ll just get the package transfered to my work address where there’s a receptionist who can sign for my wine.  Nice.

I’ll do anything to avoid waiting at the primary UPS building in south Seattle.  I spent 2 hours there one evening…nightmarish, let me tell you.  It happens more often than not when I try to go there; FedEx appears to have their act together a bit better, as does DHL, when it comes to picking up undelivered packages. 

This is all food for thought because with the rise of Internet wine purchasing capabilities, I shop online more and more for, say, 2001 Diamond Creek Volcanic Hill.  I couldn’t even begin to find that wine locally, especially not at $81 per bottle!

Anyway, I suppose my point here is that nearly all online wine retailers seem to favor a particular delivery company.  I don’t know if there is any rhyme or reason to why Vendor A uses UPS, while Vendors B and C use FedEx.  Usually it’s hard to tell which shipping company will send you the wine until after you have paid, which seems a little old-fashioned given the advanced state of the online retail market today compared to the way things were in 1996. 

So, I guess the verdict is that UPS is superior to FedEx on this particular issue.  Now if I could only choose UPS as my shipping agent when I buy wine online!

PS - My Diamond Creek bottle arrived today…looks nice in my wine fridge!  My fiance was here to receive the shipment, so I guess this particular topic isn’t all that relevant today.  It sure was when they tried to deliver my Harlan Estate, though.  I had to receive that at work.

QFC (or “Quality F Center,” as I like to call it) is another one of the large supermarket chains with tons of stores in Seattle.  On Capitol Hill alone, there are 3 QFC stores, not including the empty shell of a QFC one block from the new QFC on Broadway.  Weird.

So QFC is big around here.  The aforementioned Broadway Market QFC has a fabulous wine section, as I’ve mentioned before.  That might be due to Steve, the talkative and highly information wine expert there, who has been to Paracombe.  I’m pretty damn jealous of that.

Clearly, though, somebody at QFC is making smart wine buying decisions at the top of the local food chain…bad pun, sorry.  Here are a few choice finds from about 20 minutes spent examining the wine section at the U-Village QFC (I was waiting on my fiance who needed new pants from The Gap; I should have spent 40 minutes at QFC):

• Southern Right Sauvignon Blanc 2005 ($10.99) - I was hoping to find the Pinotage release from this winery based on this review from Vinography, but finding anything from a South African winery at a local store was a surprise to me.  I should have bought a bottle but my wine budget has been decimated lately so I skipped it.
• Several different Torbreck releases, although after this review from Appellation Australia I worry about the next batch from this vineyard
• Clonakilla Shiraz (this wine keeps popping up everywhere I go!)

The overall selection was great but most of the other wines are pretty typical for the better wine shops around Seattle.  That Southern Right was a cool find…now I just need to go buy some.

This particular QFC was also the place where Steve, the QFC wine guy, directed me when he told me about the 2000 Paracombe Cabernet Franc.  That particular wine, more than almost any other, started me on this path toward learning more about wine.  So I guess I have a very small sentimental attachment to the U-Village QFC.  Plus, they have a Cinnabon and a fireplace in the store, so what could be better (I don’t eat Cinnabon, though, and it was 70+ degrees here today, so never mind).

As I was reading the lengthy wine list at Cascadia last night, I noticed several bottles of Diamond Creek.  The youngest bottle seemed to be 1999, if I remember correctly (I may not at this point).  I do recall the prices, though: $275 and $285 seemed to be the two prices for all of the different Diamond Creek wines.  Ouch!

I have received word that my own bottle of Diamond Creek is on its way via FedEx as I type.  It’s due for delivery upon “adult signature” tomorrow.  Yeehaw!!

On a separate note, I searched the Internet for the Leeuwin Art Series Riesling since it was such a delicious wine.  I came up with an interesting hit: Flickinger Fine Wines in Chicago.  It seems that the average price for this particular wine is about $20+ per bottle.  Flickinger has 138 bottles in stock, all of the 2003 vintage, and all at $10.50/bottle!  Impressive.  I’ll be visiting Chicago next month, so perhaps I need to visit this store and pick up a few bottles…or I could just get them shipped to me, I suppose.  However, I’m out of space again in my tiny home wine fridge.  Once I get this Diamond Creek, I’ll need to withdraw at least one other bottle to make space…and then the Louise will arrive in a couple of weeks too…wow, I’m suddenly strapped for space.  I guess this great deal on Leeuwin will just need to wait.

My fiance and a couple dear friends and I went to Cascadia tonight.  Cascadia is a “happening” joint in the “Belltown” district of Seattle, right next to the “Catholic Seamen’s Club.”  Seriously.

We had a variety of different dishes, but I chose the wines and I’d say I did a darn fine job:

• Leeuwin Estate Art Series Riesling, 2002 - Lovely Riesling; ordered a 2003 but received the 2002, which turned out to be great.  Quite nice citrus and mineral essences; very rich, full wine with a bit of sweetness.  The aroma was that of brie and other soft cheese combined with a lime/tangerine/grapefruit aroma.  Incredibly good wine!
• Domaine Duseigneur Angélique, 2001 - Grenache (50%), Syrah (20%), Cinsault (20%), Mourvedre (10%); wonderfully lush, rich bouquet upon first pour; delicious, luscious texture, very ripe and perfumed.  Lots of violet and cherry but with the Mourvedre and Syrah underpinning it has a lot of body to it.  As time wore on, the Syrah came out more and more, creating mouth-filling tannins and an acidic flavor that became a bit too hot in the mouth with food…but delicious at first for sure.

I also had a glass of what I think was Clear Creek Pinot Noir Grappa, but I can’t be sure so I won’t put it on the list here.  Through no fault of my own (and no, I wasn’t drunk), I am unable to ascertain which grappa they served me.  In fact, everything about the restaurant experience was a bit…weird.  But the food was delicious and we got to try a bottle of Leeuwin, which I had wanted to taste ever since I read this review, among other, on Wine-Journal.com.  While the Chardonnay was on my short list of wines to try, the Riesling was truly marvellous and served as a great way to get the part started tonight.