Forty Bottles of Ringboree

2005
Foppiano Vineyards
Petite Sirah
Russian River Valley (Sonoma, California)
$20.79 (Liquor Barn, Lexington, Kentucky)

This has long been a favorite of mine. When my first daughter was born, I called her my Petite Sarah, and have a picture of her taken next to a bottle of this. She was about the same size.

This wine was part of a Christmas present, and somewhat more than we've been spending in wine lately.

It could clearly have stayed in the bottle another five years, but was very drinkable. Lots of typically yummy jammy peppery petite sirah flavors, and thoroughly enjoyable to sip while laying around on a new years eve watching the X Files. Great company, too.

Highly recommended. 34 bottles of Ringboree.

What I expect from Yellowtail is that it's a $6 wine that tastes like a $12 wine. So, I don't expect it to be *great*, but I expect it to outperform its price. So far, it hasn't disappointed me.

The Pinot has almost as much pepper as most Zins or Shirazes. I really liked this wine. It was served too cold, but you could tell that it had a good backbone, and a lovely long finish.

As I've said before, more than half of enjoying a wine is atmosphere, and the atmosphere was all wrong for this one. The baby screamed almost the entire time, and she she stopped, the older kids were playing the Wii.

But ...

I'm looking forward to finishing the bottle when all the kids are in bed.

Any wine is better in silence.

28 bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree for this one. Good, but not great.

We recently discovered the Harkness Edwards Vineyards Vat 32 Viognier, from a nearby winery in Clark County, Kentucky. They had a tasting at the Kroger wine store, and we've brought home several since then.

I don't know whether it's available outside of Kentucky, and I don't know what we paid for it, although I seem to remember that it was in the $12 range.

It's off-dry, with lovely fruit flavors - peaches, pineapple, and melons. It is great with cream-based sauces like alfredo, or with fish and crab.

The bottle is a lovely design, with just an "h" on it, reminiscent of the "J" winery in Napa. However (just to nitpick) since it's painted on the bottle, rather than a paper label, these bottles are harder to reuse for bottling home wines.

We really like this wine, and it's become something of a regular for us.

I'll give this one 32 Bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree. It's not amazing, but it's a consistent value and we'll probably always have one in the cellar.

I had a teacher in third and fourth grade named Mr. Bruce. He claimed that he was a direct heir of Robert The Bruce, and told stories, whenever given the opportunity, of the exploits of his famous forebear. Mr. Bruce didn't much like to teach, as far as I could tell, but rather preferred to tell stories.

Come to find out, his stories stuck with me more than anything else from those years of school. He also introduced me to Tolkien and Kipling, and thus was very instrumental in forming my view of good literature. So it seems that he did in fact like to teach, and perhaps had a better view of what was useful to teach than some of the other folks.

So, naturally, when I saw the Robert the Bruce ale at the store, I picked it up. If nothing else, it was an opportunity to write something about Mr. Bruce.

So the ale? Well, it's very nice. I always find myself at a loss for words when it comes to describing beers. I try to approach it like a wine, but the words are all wrong.

It's dark, but not black, with a deep brown gold color against the light. It's full bodied and earthy, with a long finish and a silky mouth feel. And it's yummy. Recommended. Will get this again. 28 bottles of Ringboree. Maybe more as it grows on me.