So, the Drink Local Wine – Missouri conference has been over for a while now and I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my response.  At the very least, I want to cover the highs and lows of the conference, the spits and the swallows (is that a thing?) and the laughts and the tears, but I did want some time to gain perspective.  I wanted to make sure that my thoughts about Missouri wine were well thought out and not simply riding the emotion of great food, great wine, and good times.

However, before that, I submit the following Public Service Annoucement.

Tips for Getting Over a Wine Hangover

May the record reflect that at a wine conference, there is a lot wine.  In fact, it’s about as hard as anything I’ve ever done to keep a wine glass empty for more than a few seconds.  Believe me, I tried.

Also, for the record let me say that I’ve had beer hangovers, tequilla hangovers, whiskey hangovers, and now wine hangovers.  That wine hangover was over and above, far and away, the worst hangover I’ve ever had.  Bar none.  Hands down.  Certainly, that first night at the conference was far from the drunkest I’ve ever been, but the hangover was bad.  I’m guessing it was the sulfites.

Here’s how to get those nasty things out of your system:

1.  Drink lots of water before you go to bed.  This makes sense for a hangover of any variety, but in a wine hangover, the water will help flush the system.  That’s a good thing.

2.  Take a shower when you get up.  Standing under the hot water and letting it work out some of the knots in my shoulder made me feel better, and as the muscles unknotted, it made sure all the junk in my system was flowing as freely as possible.  (That is a thing…massage therapists have their clients drink water all the time because knots trap bad bodily chemicals.)

3.  Avoid orange juice.  When I have a beer hangover, all I want is OJ.  It’s liquid + vitamins, which is the double whammy of hangover recovery.  Maybe it’s the sulfites again or the sulfites + the citric acid, but my tummy wasn’t having any.  Ice water was the rule of the day for the first hour.  Once I felt a little hydrated, I was able to move to OJ.

4.  Bagel.  Plain.  Putting something easy to digest (processed carbs) into my stomach helped calm it and allow me to drink OJ faster.

5.  Sit.  Inactivity kept the head from moving quickly.  No head movement = less headache.

6.  Ibuprofen.  As soon as I took it, my eyes stopped pulsing in time with the speakers.  That was good.

Eventually, I came around and was my old sweet self again…right in time for lunch.  Yay.  More easy-to-digest food and orange juice.

So, I highly recommend my six step system.  And if that doesn’t work, go to a wine tasting where you have to consume like 42 wines in 4 hours.  There’s nothing a hangover loves more than alcohol!

Thanks to pasukaru76 for the picture.

Enjoy!

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Since I have an hour to kill, I thought I would spend some time pontificating on local wine prior.  As I sit here mere hours from what should be an intense study/drinkfest of locally produced wines, I figure it will be interesting to compare what I think about local wine now as compared to what I will think about local wine tomorrow.

So, here are my five thoughts about Missouri Wine right now.  Please keep in mind, I am not a sommelier (though I did get the spelling right on the first try…) nor I have studied Missouri wine intensely.  On the other hand, I have drank my fair share of it and have been to Rocheport several times, Hermann several times, and St. James at least once.   (Wine + memory = not so good.)  Plus, I have availed myself of the opportunity to drink local wine whenever I can, and in doing so, have always strived to learn more about it.

1. Missouri’s Greatest Strength and Greatest Weakness is the Norton Grape

I’m going to let Wikipedia describe the Norton Grape in all it’s glory, but let me summarize what the Norton is in one word: sweet.  And not in the “Dude!  Sweet!” way.  All of the wines I have had, in particular the Steamboat Red and White from Les Bourgeois, are always very sweet.  This is no problem for me.  I love sweet.  My friend Scott, the wine snob, called them dessert wines.

2. Missouri Has Yet to Produce a Big Red

Of all the observations I will make in this post, this is the one I am the least confident about.  I’m not really one to go out and seek big reds, but I know I haven’t stumbled on one during the course of a wine tasting. 

What is a big red?  It’s bold, strong red wine…you know the ones that might get called oaky or “meaty.”  Why is this important?  As near as I can tell, it’s part of being taken seriously as a wine producing region.  So many wine lovers gravitate towards big reds that it seems like a wine portfolio isn’t complete without one.  Even if I personally find them unpalatable.

3. Where’s the Acidity?

Again, all I can do is speak for myself, but I know that the Missouri wines gracing my wine rack lack the acidity of other region’s wines, especially those I’ve had from Spain and South America.  The result is that Missouri wines may come off as having a less refined finish than those other wines.  This is something I plan to ask about during the conference.

It’s also a myth I am hoping to dispel after a few rounds of tastings.

4. Missouri Doesn’t Have a Strong Wine Culture…Yet

I know that sounds strange from someone going to a Missouri wine conference, but it’s true.  When people talk about a wine vacation, they think about Napa when St. James, Herman, Rocheport, Knob Noster, Odessa, etc. are closer, cheaper, and in many cases, almost as good (and has the potential to be better.)  And if you try to convince them to go local, you get looked at like you have a second head.

My hope is that by this time tomorrow we’ll have a concrete plan of action on how to get more people to think of Missouri as wine country.

(One thing that will help this wine culture, strangely enough, is the continued evolution of the culinary landscape in Missouri.  Good food and good wine go hand-in-hand.)

5. Missouri Will Face the Same Challenge as California

There was a time when California was thought of as a second-class citizen to other wine regions (read: France.)  Eventually, though, Captain Kirk and Dute Leto Atreides bottled a wine that showed the world that California deserved a place at the wine table.  (At least the actors who played them — Chris Pine and William Hurt — portrayed the real-life people who actually did so…)

Anyway, for Missouri to be mentioned alongside Napa, Honduras, France, and Italy as places to go for wine, it’s going to take work from everyone involved: the people who grow the wine, the people who think about the wine, and the people who order it.  It might even take a movie staring the guy fom Wings and Paul Giamatti, but if we work together, it can happen.

So tomorrow, I’ll figure out how.

Enjoy.

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It’s currently 6:38, local time, as I write this post and I am laughing at myself.  We sort of rushed to get here on time…on time for reception that literally started hours after I thought it did.  Oops.

At least the view from my hotel is nice!  And I saw Doug Frost in the hotel lobby.  I feel like I’m one step closer to getting on Check, Please!

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Tea-Sty Tuesday

Like the name?  I made it up myself!

As you might have guessed, I have decide to talk about tea every Tuesday, somewhat for the illiteration, but mostly because I really enjoy drinking tea.  If that comes as a great shock to you, I wouldn’t be surprised.  You have to figure that anyone who looks as crazy as I do in their profile probably drinks a lot of coffee.

But for some reason, I never really acquired a taste for the stuff.  Tea, on the other hand, was always plentiful in my house, so I drank it.  Sure, when Starbucks got popular, I had a love affair with $5/cup coffee and it made me feel like this guy (sophisticated, yet bemused at the price I was paying) :

when I could say (at a very rapid pace) “venti white chocolate mocha with soy, hold the whip” in a crowded room and have everyone know what I was talking about.  (Even when like half of that sentence aren’t really words.)  Still, in the end, I always came back to tea.

And since I have a blog, I figured I should start writing about it.

So, let’s cover some ground rules.  Not really because I expect you to follow them, but because I want to set some expectations.  Basically, Tea-sty Tuesdays will largely cover instant tea. 

About half of the readers of this post just left. 

Hey, there’s a reason.  I drink instant tea because I can make it in an office setting and have tea with me wherever I go.  Would I prefer to always drink tea from the kettle?  Sure, but I don’t always have a tea kettle and time to boil water.  I do, usually, have access to hot water.

I will cover some loose leaf teas, especially when I buy them thinking they are instant, but also because I enjoy them.  I will also cover tea-based alcoholic beverages, tea+milk mixes, and cooking with tea.  But all that is later. 

For now, I think I’ve yapped about enough.  I will leave you with two things.  First, this picture that came up when doing some image research on tea:

The picture is somewhat tea related and frankly, I haven’t been using sex enough to sell my blog.

I also will remind everyone about crack tea (aka oolong green tea.)  This was the first tea to really tear me away from the arms of Lipton instant tea (which is kind of like the equivalent of coffee in a huge tin you buy for $9.)  It’s delicious, mild, and it makes you awesome.

Seriously, I don’t know what it is with crack tea, but if you are tired, sick, depressed, or dead, crack tea can cure you.  And I used to think it was ridiculously expensive ($15 for a box.)  However, after paying for a a lot of tea, I can see it’s only moderately expesnive and it’s still the best money can buy.

Okay, well that’s it for this week.  Next week, I’ll be back with a new review.  Until then, thanks to Shandi-lee, Cavin, and Carnival King 08 (and Julie) for the pics.  Go drink some tea and enjoy!

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Photo Credit teafromtaiwan.com

Oolong Tea (a.k.a Crack Tea)

So, funny story.  I was sitting in front of my computer, with a nice little headache, talking to a friend of mine who is dragging a bit.  We’re both lamenting because he’s tired and I’m trying to think of a topic on which to write.  Anyway, I start telling him that instead of energy drinks, whenever I feel like I need a pick-me-up or when I have a cold, I drink crack tea.  For minutes I go on and on about how this green oolong tea we get from TeaFromTaiwan.com is better than coffee, makes us feel better when we are sick, and is basically what makes us awesome.

I’m not sure he went and bought any, but it did give me a topic.  I’m going to review crack tea!

Wait, Why’s It Called Crack Tea?

Well, for starters the package is written in Chinese characters, so we had to call it something.  More importantly, we called it crack tea because the minute it entered into our office, none of us could stop drinking it.  I would go through 2 bags a day and I started hoarding some in my desk because I wanted to make sure it would be there when I needed a fix.  I even carried some around in my planner because I might need a little at home.

Okay, I have to stop here and say don’t freak out.  While all of that was true, I wasn’t quite the addict I claimed to be.  (Hi Mom!)  It was just I do love my caffeine and I used the stuff to get me off soda, which was pretty cool.

Anyway, crack tea also earned the name crack tea because of the caffeine in it.  We said drinking it was like being on crack, though frankly, I’m not sure any of us actually know what that’s like.  (Daniel?)

Either way, the stuff tastes good (tea purists will roll over in their grave when they hear I sweeten it … with Sweet and Low), it packs a punch, and seriously, if you have a cold, it’s 1,000 times better than DayQuil.  So if you get the chance, try some out.  A pack of 50 bags is only $16, which is a bargain when you think of all the soda and over the counter cold meds you won’t need to buy!

Fair Warning

I don’t know, I feel the need to raise the only concern about crack tea I have.  My concern goes back to the package being written in Chinese characters.  I honestly have no idea what’s in it.  I am pretty sure it’s only tea leaves and maybe a little cassia bark or something for flavor, but if you are really concerned, a little more research or a call to the owners of the website might not be a bad idea.

Honestly, at the end of the day, the stuff is probably made in the US and given crazy packaging so that American consumers think they are getting something mystical.  I’m not too worried about it.  The site appears reputable and I seem to be okay after drinking it for almost a year, so yeah, I say go for it.

Get your own crack…er oolong tea!

Picture taken from teafromtaiwan.com

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The White Album- Perfect Music to Listen to for a White Meal

Okay, so the fashionistas all agree that you can’t wear white after Labor Day, but, I’m wondering about eating white after Labor Day.  Think about it.  If you can’t wear white, you’re probably wearing darker colors and if you spill… yikes!  Who knows…maybe tomorow the manner experts are going to outlaw fettuchini alfredo, sugar cookies, and White Russians!!

Just in case, maybe you should try this all-white Labor Day menu.  It’s not exactly the most waistline-friendly, but that’s not my fault.  I was trying to think of what was white and, of course, I thought of heavy cream!  It’s not my fault this meal is so creamy and delicious.  I have to make sure every one gets one last white meal during Labor Day.

You know, just in case.

An All White Labor Day Feast

Okay, by the way, this feast will be completely meatless as benefitting my normal #meatlessmonday tradition.  If you want some meat, I’d go with scallops.  They’re white and juicy…just the kind of thing that would be perfect to get forbidden if the anti-white-food-after-Labor-Day league gets their way.

The menu for today is going to be easy, but totally delicious.  For starters, there will be a platter of roasted root vegetables (turnips, celery root, and parsnips are all white.)  Dinner will be a lovely combination of fettuccini alfredo, cauliflower au gratin, and garlic bread (you can cut the crusts off to be safely white if you want.)  To bring the meal home, dessert is a white chocolate cheesecake.  Oh, and to drink?  White Godiva chocolate martinis will wash it all down.

White Chocolate Martini

This is recipe is an adaptation of one I found at Godiva’s recipe page.  You can use another white chocolate liqueur if you want, but I don’t know why you would want…

You will need:

• 1 ounce Godiva White Chocolate Liqueur
• 3/4 ounce Vanilla flavored vodka
• 1/2 ounce White Chocolate creme de cacao

Combine all ingredients in a shaker.  Mix. Serve over ice.

Roasted Root Vegetables

Roasted root vegetables are surprisingly delcious.  The roasting process develops great flavor and a light dusting of pepper, salt, and a hint of garlic powder makes them a tasty snack or starter.

You will need:

• 2 parsnips
• 1 turnip
• 1 celery root
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tablespoon each salt, pepper, garlic powder

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Peel and cut the vegetables into 1 inch long pieces, about 1/2 inch wide by 1/2 inch high.  Put them in a plastic bag with the spices and shake.

Remove from the plastic bag and put the veggies on a cookie sheet and bake for 30 minutes or until fork tender.

Fettuccini Alfredo

The classic creamy pasta dish.  If this weren’t a #meatlessmonday, you can add some grilled chicken (which would be mostly white.)  Also, if this weren’t an all-white meal, you could add some steamed broccoli and make a great meal.  But it’s a white, meatless meal.  So you can’t.

You will need:

• 4 ounces fettuccini per person*
• 8 ounces butter
• 8 ounces AP flour
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 2 cups Parmesan cheese
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tablespoon white pepper
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

*This recipe will make enough sauce for four people. 

Cook the pasta according to package directions in well-salted water.

Melt the butter in a high sided skillet and then add the flour.  Mix together to form a paste.  Cook the paste for 1-2 minutes until it starts to darken and smell nutty.  Then add the cream and the cheese.  Stir until the cheese starts to melt and the flour is well incorporated.

Beat the egg and add it to the sauce along with the white pepper and cayenne (yes, it’s a red risk, but we’ll chance it.)  Stir until the sauce thickens.

Pour over the noodles.

Cauliflower Gratin

This is a great side.  Easy to make, delicious, and filled with lots of delicious heavy cream and butter.

You will need:

• 1 stick butter
• 2 heads’ cauliflower florets
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 cups breadcrumbs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt the stick of butter.  Then pour all the ingredients except the breadcrumbs into a baking dish.  Bake for 45 minutes or until the cream has thickened.  Top with breadcrumbs.

Garlic Bread

This is a simple side.  You can use whole grain white bread with the crusts removed or chance a little bit of dark crust and use good Italian bread.

You will need:

• 2 pieces bread per person
• 1-2 cloves garlic
• 1/2 tablespoon butter per slice
• Grated Parmesan cheese to taste

Preheat the broiler about 15 minutes before dinner is served.  Cut the garlic cloves in half and rub the bread with the garlic.  Butter and top with grated cheese.

Broil for 30-60 seconds or until the bread is just getting crisp.

White Chocolate Cheesecake

Okay, it’s dessert time and I am punting.  Here’s a great white chocolate cheesecake recipe I found on the Food Network.  Just don’t use the raspberries!

Putting the Menu Together

Night before:

Bake the root vegetables, cheesecake, and mix the gratin.

An hour before:

Start the gratin baking, butter the garlic bread

30 minutes before:

Set the vegetables, make the alfredo

15 minutes before:

Make the garlic bread

Serving time:

Shake some cocktails

After that…enjoy!

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Jennifer Iannolo

I knew there was something special about Jennifer Iannolo (aka @foodphilosophy) when she once tweeted her favorite meal.  The details have long since been forgotten except for the fact it started with “when me and Charlie” sat down for a meal. 

Now, for the rest of you who aren’t on a first name basis with the culinary greats, the “Charlie” she spoke of, was none other than Charlie Trotter, one of the best chefs in the world.  And the restaurant they ate at belonged to Alain Ducasse.  

I knew she was a great podcaster and food vlogger and I had visited her site at the Culinary Media Network (CMN) many times.  I just had no idea she was so close with Charlie (that’s Chef Trotter to the rest of us) and that she had so many great stories to tell. 

From listening to her podcasts and watching her vlogs, I always had this romantic notion that her days are filled with hob knobbing with chefs, eating their delicious foods, and then coming home at night to Tweet about it.  This, of course, would be her regular schedule.  On special days she’s jet setting halfway across the world to hob knob with chefs, eat their delicious foods, and then go back to the hotel to Tweet about it. 

When I finally chased her down, she slightly disabused me of the notion.  Apparently, there is more to being the CEO of the CMN than the whole hob knobbing/eating/jet setting thing, though that is a very visible part of what she does because she podcasts and vlogs about it.  (If you’re interested, you can see some of her work on the CMN site and on her own FoodPhilosophy.com.)  Still, despite all of that work, she’s a businesswoman first.

Using the business degree she earned from the Stern School of Business at New York University, she offers food consulting to various restaurants.  While she already has a presence in Web 2.0 consulting and media, there’s something else in the works that she hinted at, but now all I can say is that it is coming soon.  This project will allow her to consult with restaurants on the full range of Social Media marketing opportunities.  More to come…

In the meantime, she’ll have to content herself with all her other jobs.  Like the food consulting and being a cookbook author.  Together with her Culinary Media Network associates (including Chef Mark Tafoya who was interviewed earlier on the blog), she assembled The Gilded Fork Cookbook, a cookbook containing 3-4 years’ worth of recipes from the website.  Even though the recipes are on the web, “there’s something about a physical cookbook,” she says. 

The goal of the book was simple.  “We wanted to convey our idea of entertaining.”  Jennifer, Mark and the others all believe the entertaining should be fun and stress-free, which is why they’ve taken care of all the details, even the wine pairings in their book.  (A full review is coming, I promise.)

She also runs an online boutique, the Gilded Fork (shop.gildedfork.com), where she offers artisan products that are hard to find anywhere else.  The site features brownies, oils, flor de sel, truffle salt, black garlic, and a special Italian olive oil that “people buy by the case,” she says.  It’s a store “for foodies” by people who know food.

So podcaster, vlogger, social media master, online store owner, cookbook author, and a woman who rubs elbows with the finest chefs in the world, all describe Jennifer, but they still don’t form the complete picture because they don’t explain her philosophy.  For a woman known to many as @foodphilosophy, it’s important to know what drives her, because beliefs about food drive everything she does.

At heart, Jennifer is a sensualist who believes that food is something that can excite every sense: smell, sight, touch, sound, and, of course, taste.  It was something she experienced while working in the kitchens and in the businesses of some of the greatest chefs in the world : Thomas Keller, Charlie, Daniel Boulud, just to name a few. 

While working with these great chefs, she also learned quickly that being a chef is not a glamorous business, so she wanted to find out “what moved their [the chefs] souls.”  She wanted to find what it was about cooking that got them through the tough times and share that with her readers, listeners, and watchers.  She wanted to give them a chef’s point of view.

All of this culminated in, what she calls, a “moment of truth.”  She sat down and wrote an article called “On Food and Sensuality,” (read about it here) which was a phrase she used to describe food that was as pleasing to the mind and body as sex.  It was something chefs grasped intuitively, but as she wrote the article, she was not sure how the idea would be received. 

Fast forward five years and her article continues  to captivate readers and is opening up avenues which may or may not be suitable for a G-rated blog like this one, she explains while laughing.  It’s also allowed her to open “Bachelor Bootcamp” so that she can teach us guys a few things about the sensual pleasures of food and how to use it to accentuate the sensual pleasures of …other things.

Ultimately, though, I save the best for last.  After all the time in the kitchen, directing a “space camp for foodies” called L’Ecole des Chefs from Relais & Chateaux, managing the James Beard Award, and writing an article that is changing the way people think about food, there is one thing that amazes me about Jennifer: she has no formal culinary training.

When compared to being on a first name basis with Michelin-rated chefs or getting a cookbook out in three months (which is seriously how long it took to get The Gilded Fork out), it may not seem like much to anyone else, but she and Chef Mark are inspirations to any of us who want to play with a food for a living.  It may take some hardwork, but it can be done and for that bit of inspiration, we owe Jennifer a big thanks.

So when you’re done here, check out her site.  You can get a feeling for her recipes by checking out the cocktail below.  Oh, if you do go to the FoodPhilosophy.com website, that is actually her with the grapes.  Most importantly read her words, watch her have fun and know that this is a women who has inspired chefs to keep cooking, people to learn to be chefs, and more than one blogger to think about living and playing with his food.

Now, ready for that cocktail?  The Vanilla Vixen Cocktail originally appear on The Culinary Media Network and it and its picture were stolen (with permission from there).  For variations and a bit about this cocktail, check out the link!

Vanilla Vixen Cocktail

The cocktail recipe makes 1 drink, but the syrup and the sugar yield enough for multiple drinks

Ingredients

For the vanilla syrup:
2 cups water
2 cups sugar
1 vanilla bean, split in half and seeds scraped

For the vanilla sugar, (optional garnish):
2 cups sugar
1 vanilla bean, used and reserved vanilla bean from the syrup

For the cocktail:
1½ oz vanilla syrup
2 oz vodka
splash of lime juice
1 oz sparkling water (or club soda)
Vanilla Bean (fresh or dried), optional for garnish

Equipment
Martini glasses
Martini shaker
Airtight jar or container

Preparation

Prepare the vanilla syrup:
Combine the water, sugar and vanilla bean in a medium pot and bring the mixture to a simmer, dissolving the sugar. Turn off the heat, cover and let the mixture steep for 1 hour. Remove the vanilla bean (there is no need to strain because the seeds will pass through a sieve, and they add a lovely speckled appearance to the cocktail). Reserve the vanilla pod for use in the sugar. Cool the syrup to room temperature and set aside until ready to serve. This will keep refrigerated for 1 month.

Prepare the vanilla sugar:
Place 1 cup of the sugar in a large container with an airtight lid. Cut each half of the vanilla bean in half again, this time width-wise, and add the pieces to the sugar. Cover with the remaining 1 cup of sugar and seal the lid tightly. Place in a cool area and shake the container several times per day to distribute the vanilla essence. Continue this process for at least 1 week, and up to 1 month.

Prepare the cocktail:
Pour some of the vanilla sugar onto a small plate that is wide enough to fit the rim of the martini glass. Lightly wet the rim of the glass with water, then dip into the sugar plate, making sure to coat the entire rim with sugar.

Pour all ingredients except the vanilla bean into a cocktail shaker about ½ full of ice. Shake vigorously for about 30 seconds. Strain into the sugared martini glass and garnish with a dried vanilla bean.

Recipe and photo by Monica Glass

The picture of Jennifer was taken from FoodPhilosophy.com.

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I knew if I needed to find the official drink of unResolution month, she would have it.  And, as usual, I was not disappointed:

Pumpkin Pie Preggatini

Though this recipe was featured on her blog, she also has a book out called Preggatinis: Mixology for the Mom-to-be, a collection of non-alcoholic drinks which look absolutely delicious. And while the book says its for the mom-to-be, it’s also great for anyone who does not drink or cannot have alcohol for whatever reason.  (Personally, I would have called it Delicious Designated Driving but that’s just me…)

Anyway, when I was mapping out what I was going to do for the “A month is four weeks, which is 28 days BUT January has 31 days so I need to find 3 more days worth of delicious but unhealthy foods” section of unResolution month, I just knew this was the drink for me because I love pumpkin and this one does not shy away from the calories.

The Pumpkin Pie Preggatini Drink

You can get the recipe and instructions for this drink or a bunch of others off her site, but lest you think I am falling down on the job, I wanted to hightlight some ingredients in this drink, in particular condensed milk, syrup, whipped cream, and graham crackers which pretty much means it’s a little slice of dessert in a cold cocktail glass.  Even the image of the drink on her blog looks absolutely amazing and I hope everyone goes out and makes their own.

Guys, if the title of the drink makes you feel weird, forget the preggatini part.  Think of it as a way to get your pumpkin pie without having to take time to get up off the couch, cut a slice of pie, and put in on a plate.  It’s very manly to save time like that, right?

Okay, get to mixing and enjoy!

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I had to try more than one wine.  Far be it from me to stop at one glass when they are giving wine away.  I tried the Cayuga, the Seyval Blanc, and the Rhubarb.  But it was Charlemagne that really caught my attention.

The Sweet Red Wine Charlemagne

Yes, it was sweet.  Like after-dinner or reduced-to-syrup-and-served-over-ice-cream sweet.  At the same time, though, it had a bolder flavor than I am used to in sweet red wine and it had a nice floral bouquet.  Plus, the sweetness was not overpowering so I actually got to taste the wine, not the sugar.

Plus I found that the United States Marine Corps private labels it and serves it at its galas.  So I figured if it was good enough for them, well it was probably good enough for me, too.

Going to Lawrence

If you are ever in the Lawrence, Kansas area, stop by Davenport Orchards and Winery (it’s about 5 miles East along K-10.)  If you like dry reds, the Chat in the Dark is very good and their Apple Wine is still my favorite desert white ever.  Though don’t tell ‘em that the blogger who didn’t like the watermelon wine sent you.  It probably wouldn’t do you any good.

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I owe a lot of Davenport.  It is the first winery tour I ever took and strangely enough, I think I still have a bottle of apple wine I purchased that day.  I can only imagine after 7 years, it’s probably lost some of its luster.

I have moved on to new liquid loves, but every year I make it back to pick up a little something.  For the past two years, it’s been apple wine.  Not only is it delicious, but they are always out of what I really want: their watermelon wine.

Not this year!  This year they had several cases of it.  Which could only mean that either I had come at a different time of the year, they had made more of it, or they had sold less of it.  I think they have only had it three years, so it is likely they are finally ramping up the production, although given the economy, it is quite possible that they are selling less.

Still, I was happy that I finally got to try it.

Watermelon Wine in Review

Well, sadly, all in all, watermelon wine is nothing to write home about (though strangely it is something to write a blog post about.  Oh well.)  Honestly, I think they cut the watermelon down too far because it tasted like rind.  Which is never good.

Really, that’s pretty much all I have to say about it.  It was not near sweet enough and it tasted green.  I was saddened, because I figured I’d be taking a small loan out to buy their entire supply and spending the next month drunkenly blogging about watermelon wine recipes.

Still, I didn’t come away totally empty handed.  More on that tomorrow.

But until then, please has anyone else had watermelon wine?  Leave me a comment and tell me your experience?

Photo courtesy of Davenport Orchards & Winery.

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