A busy morning of work. At 10:00 I ate an egg bagel smeared with cream cheese and garnished with thin slices of red onion and Gravad Lax. It was wonderful with a cup of camomile green tea.
At 12:00 I drove to the Bank and then Jodie’s to leave my mini for a repair.
Suzette and Billy picked me up at Jodie’s and we drove north to Taos, stopping at the Dairy Queen in Espanola for an ice cream cone.
We arrived at the rental house at 32 Sarita Lane at about 4:00. It was a lovely house with big rooms with high ceilings containing three bedrooms, a large kitchen, a large living room and a library. We rested until 4:40 and then drove to the Sagebrush Inn.
The wine tasting was in a large ballroom in a separate building behind the Inn.
The tasting was as good as ever. I drank lots of great wines. Here was my favorite.
I did not take a picture of it but my favorite red was Heitz Vineyard’s 2013 Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon. I asked the pourer how much it cost at retail and she told me “$245.” It was the best of show for me.
The food was not as wonderful as usual. One chef made a fresh paella with chicken, shrimp, mussels, chorizo sausage slices and clams that was lovely. My favorite restaurant was Lambert’s that served duck confit Meatballs, BBQ’d pastrami bacon, black truffle salami and
Humbolt Fog goat cheese with a dried fruit compote for the salami.
Although the Taos High School’s Culinary Arts Division’s dark chocolate truffles were reliably melt in your mouth delicious, my favorite dessert was made by Medley. It was a scoop of red raspberry mousse on a chocolate ganache in a chocolate cake cup. Here is s picture of both desserts.
We arrived at 5:00 and left at 7:00.
It seems to me that every year there are more interesting wines poured. Many of the wines poured tonight were limited allocation wines. For example, my favorite white was a Saint Joseph. Synergy, the distributor told me there were only 40 cases imported into the U.S. and Synergy bought all of them.
It almost seemed to me that it was an evening that Distributors and importers counting coup as to who could pour the most interesting and unusual wine. For example, Kermit Lynch poured an elegant Corsican rose that was almost clear that got my attention. Schramsburg poured a 2009 reserve brut that was breathtakingly rich in flavor. Just stellar wine after stellar wine. The smoothness of the Argyle Pinot Noir and the Arista from Anderson Valley also caught my attention.
Perhaps because I had eaten so little today, I did not get stuffed or drunk, although I tried to restrain myself to one or two small sips of each of the 25 to thirty or so wines I tasted.
When we returned our agent had been to the house and turned on the TV for us. We got Willy’s Netflix password and watched an interesting movie starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson portraying the two Texas Rangers who tracked down and killed Bonnie and Clyde in Louisiana. We enjoyed the movie and the script delved into the character of the two men who were in essence paid killers, but for the good guys.
Bon Appetit
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