Forty 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.

This was a gift from a friend and co-worker, perhaps 6 or 7 years ago. We had been saving it specifically for our 2010 New Years dinner, and that happy event was postponed a few weeks due to scheduling conflicts, but finally came around.

This wine was truly wonderful. A nose almost like bourbon in its intensity. Peat and fresh cut pine, mint and vanilla. A real treat just to sniff. Big jammy flavors, but very soft, with the enormous tannins from several years back all melted away. Lovely long silky finish. Deep red and gold color.

I'm awfully glad we saved it, and glad we picked this moment to open it. It was just about perfect, and, sharing it with dear friends made it even better. A truly remarkable wine, and a huge encouragement to hold on to some of my more precious bottles a few years longer. This earns the very rare 40 bottles of ring-bo-ree, and wish that you, too, may go to sea in a sieve, to the hills of the Chankly Bore.

Last night we had the 2007 Castillo de Molina Pinot Noir Reserva with spaghetti. I tasted it first with a Double Gloucester, which it stood up very well to. It was fairly tannic, but they softened very quickly, so perhaps this is made to drink pretty young. Strawberries and mineral aromas. Soft red berries in the mouth.

I'll give this one 28 bottles of Ringboree. At $9, a great buy. I expect we'll be getting this one again.