Jean and I just returned from a brief (4-day) trip to Florida to visit her parents. While there, we cooked a dinner of assorted seafood (clams, crab cakes and flounder). While out shopping for the meal, Jean and I stopped in to the local gourmet shop to look for wines and came away -- mirabile dictu! -- with a bottle of the '04 Pepiere Muscadet. Yes, the consensus Internet Winegeek White of '05 was being sold in Ormond Beach, FL, of all places!
nose: slightly oxidized, blowing off to show light fruit and a hint of minerals palate: light, crisp, fruity, lovely
Yet another great showing for this wine. Even the non-wine geeks in the family loved it with the shellfish and it made the '05 Monkey Bay SB that followed it seem positively clumsy by comparison.
Tonight, after a day spent traveling homeward with a sleep-deprived two-year old, we get takeout pizza and opened a bottle of the 2001 Seghesio Sonoma Zinfandel ($14.95 price tag still on the bottle):
nose: deep, Zinberry fruit, a hint of caramel-like oakiness palate: good acidity, deeply fruity, quite harmonious
Quite frankly, this wine was better than I'd expected and was pretty much wasted on the pizza. Fortunately, I have more and next time it'll be served with red meat of some sort, where I expect that it'll shine.
Mark Lipton