A while back we received a wine in our Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant club shipment that was fantastic - a 2006 Barrack Brand from Happy Canyon Vineyard.  We loved this wine so much that we ordered more (good thing we did as it is now sold out!).  So when we were recently in Santa Barbara for a weekend, we made a point to visit the Margerum Wine Company tasting room. We loved the Margerum brand wines (The M5 and Uber Syrah especially) and almost every one of the Happy Canyon Vineyard wines - the Happy Canyon wines that we loved and came to purchase were as good as we remembered. But we discovered a new one while we were there - a great every day wine at what seemed to be a bargain price of $14.99. 
From the web site:  "CHUKKER is inspired by the great Chinon and Bourgueil wine from
the Loire Valley that are served cool and consumed mostly in Paris bistros. This
year's CHUKKER is a blend of estate grown stainless steel fermented (one-third
whole cluster) Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon, with a very
little Syrah added in just for fun. It is not Beaujolais Nouveau (that November
release date is just too early) but it is fresh and delicious. CHUKKER is a
wine like no other - fun, fruity, young, dashing, drinks great, and is
inexpensive. CHUKKER is a new spring tradition. CHUKKER is wine's answer to
spring fashion: trendy, seasonal, red, hip, and tasty. What more can we ask for
in a wine?"

Well, I agree!  This young red, with 40% Merlot, 40% Cab Franc and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon, is made to enjoy now. Steel fermented, no oak, this wine is all dark berrries with hints of cocoa and nutmeg.  The tannins are smooth and it is a very easy drinking, food friendly wine.  We loved it with grilled burgers and ribs. 

Bottom line - this is a great value wine at $14.99.  Hurry and get some before it's sold out!

Cheers!
 
Yes, I've been a lousy blogger. In an effort to get back on track, I thought I'd tell you about a great wine we had last night. 

The 2006 Coyam Emiliana is a bathtub blend of Syrah, Merlot, Carmenere, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec from the Colchagua Valley in Chile. Wine Spectator gave it a 91 point rating, with which I wholeheartedly agree. It is a beautiful violet color and is full bodied, well balanced and very smooth.  Everything I love in a wine! On the palate it smacks of ripe black fruits, with notes of oak, minerals, toffee and chocolate, giving it a wonderful complexity.  This would go well with roasted meat, hearty pasta sauce and strong cheese (although I confess that I had it with some Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies....not a bad pairing if I do say so myself!).  We found this for $30 a bottle and it is a great wine for the price. 
 
 
Oakland. The city's name conjures many things, but wine tasting isn't typically one of them.  This past weekend I had the pleasure of discovering some amazing urban wineries - yes, in Oakland - and meeting several Twitter friends IRL (in real life). 
Thanks to the great connections and excellent organizational skills of @BungRCooper, nine of us met in Oakland for a fun day of food and wine.  I had never met any of these Twitter friends in person before, and it was a fantastic experience.  

After a fun lunch at Chop Bar in Oakland, we started our urban wine tasting tour. 

JC Cellars:    Our first stop was JC Cellars.  Jeff Cohn was formerly the winemaker at Rosenblum, where he annually crafted more than 70 different wines. Today, at his Oakland-based warehouse winery, he limits himself to a mere 21 
bottlings, focusing on Rhône varietals. In addition to making great tasting wines, I loved the names: "The First Date", "The Imposter", "Twist of Fate", "Smoke and Mirrors", "Misc. Stuff" - you get the idea.  I enjoyed all of the wines we tasted, but my favorites were the St. Peter's Church Vineyard Zinfandel, an Alexander Valley Zin that is big and chewy with a lot of fruit and spice, just the way I like them, and the Rockpile "Haley" Syrah, with tons of cherry and black fruit and minerals.  In fact, if you love Rockpile wines (who doesn't??), JC Cellars does several.  Highly recommended.  

From here, we trekked (about 3 steps) to
Dashe Cellars (the two wineries share a tasting room). Michael and Anne Dashe founded Dashe Cellars in 1996, and they focus on making great single-vineyard wines. First of all, let me just say that I love their label. We tasted several wines here but I admit, I was chatting more than I was tasting.  Some of the standouts here were the Les Enfants Terribles wines - "limited-production wines, made very simply to best reflect 
 the cool-climate vineyards from which they’re made. They are always fermented using native yeasts, have very low levels of SO2, are unfined and are usually unfiltered. As a result, they display beautiful lightness, finesse and 
minerality, with great underlying complexity and balance of a “natural” wine."  I really enjoyed them and plan on re-visitng Dashe to try some more of their wines. 
Next, we headed over to  Urban Legend Cellars.  Now this was my kind of place! Steve and Marilee Shaffer run a classic "Mom and Pop" place and make you feel right at home the minute you walk through the door.  They were welcoming, friendly, knowledgeable and they make some damn good wine.  I was thrilled to see some varietals (varieties? that argument is a whole 'nother can of worms) that I love - especially Petit Verdot and Teroldego.  But you'll also find Sangiovese, Mourvedre, Tempranillo, Malbec and Barbera (among others).  I was so happy tasting all of these delicious wines, and chatting with Steve and Marilee, that my New Year's resolution (such as it was) flew out the window and I not only purchased several bottles of wine, I also joined the wine club.  (Not to worry, if Jason was cranky to begin with he was soon won over with some Urban Legend wine.)  I recommend running, not walking, to taste the good wines and enjoy the good company at Urban Legend Cellars.
Our final stop of the day was Rock Wall Wine Company, which is located on the old Naval air base in Alameda.  The tasting room is new and pretty and has a nice view of the City.  Here we had the pleasure of meeting Shauna Rosenblum. Shauna pulled out all the stops - great food from the on-site bistro, a great tasting of wines, and a fun tour and barrel tasting. Thanks again, Shauna!  Shauna is a super talented, fun and friendly person. She has a pottery studio on site at the winery, where she makes her own amphorae, she designed the logo of the San Francisco skyline, and she is a bit of a mad scientist as a wine maker, making some rarely found varietals (Norton, anyone?) and giving old favorites a new spin. My favorites here were the 2009 Zinfandel Monte Rosso Reserve and the 2009 Cabernet Franc (holy jalapeno, batman, this was awesome!).  I can't wait to come back here with Jason and buy some more wine.  We drank the Cabernet Franc when I got home that evening, and we both agreed it was fantastic
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So the next time you feel like wine tasting and want to try something different, please consider giving Oakland a try.  I knew there was great food to be had there, and now I know there is great wine being made there as well! 

Many thanks to my Twitter drinking buddies for a fun day! I look forward to doing it again soon.
 
Where does the time go? It seems the older I get, the quicker it goes and the more blurry it becomes (no, that's not just my deteriorating eyesight, thankyouverymuch). So, here we are at the end of another year. I'm trying not to make any hardcore "resolutions" because they will just be broken come, oh, January 15th.  Instead, I thought I'd take a quick look back at this year in order to acknowledge its passing and in order to look forward to the coming year with excitement and anticipation. 

I'm extremely grateful and thankful that this year has held such good experiences and that my loved ones are healthy. My daughter is growing up more and more with every passing second and is the joy (and exasperation) of my life. In the past year I have reconnected with two friends that I had lost touch with over the past decade. I have spent time with dear old friends and made a few new ones.  I've spent a lot of time with my family, including two large, crazy and fun extended family get togethers.  Here are some of my highights from a very good year:
Travel:  Our summer vacation in France. We spent a week in the Loire Valley in a 200 year-old stone cottage.  Jason's mother and father joined us there from England and we spent the week touring the Loire Valley, visiting chateaux, wine tasting and befriending the resident peacock.  We spent the following week in Paris where, despite the torrential rain (every day), we had a wonderful time sightseeing and eating and drinking and visiting with friends and relatives. 

Food:  In a year filled with very good meals (in France and Mexico especially!) one experience stands out head and shoulders above the rest:  dinner at the French Laundry.  After maybe half a lifetime of dying to eat there, Jason finally made the dream come true. The entire experience (it was so much more than just a meal) was something I will always remember.  If you'd like to read the details of our amazing dinner at the French Laundry, I blogged about it here.
Friends:  Social media isn't called that for nothing! Through the power of Twitter, I have met so many wonderful new people.  They all share my passion for wine and food and fun - what a great way to meet new like-minded people! I have plans to meet several more of them in the coming months.  How cool is that? Meanwhile, in real life, two of my dear friends are expecting a new baby girl. I can't wait to kiss those fingers and toes and smell that new baby smell.  We met some great new friends at a wine dinner a few months ago and look forward to getting to know them better. I ran into an old friend I hadn't seen in about 10 years while on "Safari" in Santa Rosa, of all places, and we have had a great time reconnecting. And thanks to my girl's school and sports, we continue to get to know great people from our community. I am blessed!
Wine:   Where to start?  This past year I have really explored and expanded my love of wine.  Once again, Twitter has been instrumental in putting me in contact with amazing winos and winemakers alike (the two are not mutually exclusive).  We made several visits to wine country (I'm thankful we live so close), have found some amazing new wines and wineries and continued to enjoy old favorites.  We really stepped out of our comfort zone and have tried a ton of new wines this year - new varieties, new countries, etc. I absolutely feel like my tastes, and my knowledge, have grown exponentially this past year.  In fact, I just received some great news for the end of the year:  I passed (with distrinction, I'm told) my WSET certification exam.  I took the 16 hour class in November (I highly recommend Discover Wine and Spirits of San Francisco).  It was an intense, 2 day class, with 42 wines tasted. I had fun and learned so much.  The thing is, I have the bug now!  I'm wondering how soon I will take the WSET advanced course....being a wino is a slippery slope! This year I have rediscovered a love of white wines (which makes Jason very happy), although, alas, I have still not met a Chardonnay that I've loved. I have discovered some amazing new varieties of both red and white wines.  And one of my favorite wine experiences of the year has got to be the incredibly fun Mollydooker winemaker's dinner in San Francisco. 
As you can see, I've had a great year and have so much to be thankful for.  This year has been so good, I wouldn"t change a thing and I'm looking forward to more of the same in 2012.  More time with family and friends, more travel, more good food and especially.....drinking more wine!  Thank you so much for coming on this journey with me.  So to my readers (all three of you), from my family to yours, we wish you peace, love, health, happiness and fine wine in 2012. Cheers!
 
In this season of excess, I have discovered a food and wine pairing that gives new meaning to the word "indulgence" - Tokaji Aszu and caramel oatmeal chocolate chip bars, otherwise known as "crack".  These caramel oatmeal chocolate chip bars are a favorite in our house and my girl requests them often.  I try not to make them too frequently, as they are ooey, gooey slices of evil that demand to be eaten whenever they are around.  But I succumbed this past weekend and made some.  Jason and I had an unopened bottle of 2001 Hetzsolo Tokaji Aszu in te refrigerator, so we decided to celebrate the season and open it.  And, of course, eat the evil cookie bars. 
Tokaji Aszu is a sweet wine from Hungary, made from grapes affected by noble rot, or Botrytis cinerea. The aszu berries are individually picked  and then stomped into a pasty consistency called aszu dough. The must or wine is then poured onto the aszu dough and then left for 24 to 48 hours.  The wine is then put into wooden casks or vats to complete fermentation and to mature, which usually takes several years.  Puttonyos is a unit used to indicate the sugar content – or sweetness – of the wines.  Aszu wines range from 3 puttonyos to 6 puttonyos, with 6 being the
sweetest. 
Since discovering Tokaji Aszu earlier this year, I've been a bit obsessed.  I  love everything about these wines, from the gorgeous rich color to the smooth, sweet, honeyed flavors.  This particular Tokaji Aszu has flavors of orange peel
and dried apricots, but also has a slightly salty finish - which I think is what  made it such a delicious pairing with the caramel.  And the dark choocolate that we used wasn't so sweet as to overpower the wine.  The combination was
incredible, but I did have to have a second glass and a second bar just to make sure.  Verdict: I was not wrong.
If you would like to try this at home, below is the recipe for Crack, or caramel oatmeal chocolate chip bars.  We've been making these for so long now, I no longer remember where the recipe originally came from, so my apologies to the creator for not giving recognition where it is due. These cookie bars are evil, addicting and downright delicious.  Don't say I didn't warn you!
P.S.  It is tradtion in my family that at Christmas time I make homemade English Toffee, which is also a bit like crack. I foresee the rich buttery toffee, with its sprinking of sea salt, being another good pairing with Tokaji Aszu.  I will consider it research and will report back. Happy holidays!
Caramel Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies  (or Crack, as they are known in our house)

1 cup plus 3 Tbs all-purpose flour
1 cup quick-cooking oats
 ¾ cup firmly packed brown sugar
 ¼ tsp salt
 ½ tsp baking soda
 ¾ cup butter, melted and cooled
 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
 ½ cup chopped pecans (optional)
 ¾ cup caramel ice cream topping

 Preheat oven to 350  F.
 1.  In large mixing bowl, combine 1 cup flour, oats, brown sugar, salt, baking soda and melted butter.  Blend at low speed to form crumbs.

 2. Press half the crumbs into bottom of an 11” x 9” pan; bake for 10 minutes.  Remove from oven and sprinkle with chips and pecans (if using). 
  
3.  In small bowl, blend caramel topping with remaining 3 Tbs flour.  Drizzle over the chips and nuts to cover. 
 
4.  Sprinkle remaining crumbs over caramel and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until golden brown.  Allow to cool.
Chill covered for 1 to 2 hours and then cut into bars. Store in airtight container.  


 
This past Wine Wednesday, Jason was working late and I was – shockingly - in the mood for a glass of wine.  I figured since it was a weekday I’d open an inexpensive bottle of wine and knew just the one I wanted. I couldn’t remember the name of the producer but had a mental image of the label.  So, when I went out to our wine “cellar” I searched through the racks until I found the label I was looking for.  It has the right colors, looked just like I remembered. I opened it and decanted it, setting the bottle aside without paying much attention.  I poured a glass, swirled and sniffed, and thought, “Gee, this smells much better than I remember.” Then I took a sip and said, “Damn, this wine is good! I don’t remember it being that good.”  Well, as you’ve probably figured out, I had opened a completely different bottle of wine than the one intended. 
The wine we were drinking was a 2008 Teso la Monja Almirez from Toro, Spain. Made from Tinto de Toro (Tempranillo), this was a big, big wine. It’s silky in texture with concentrated fruit - fresh raspberry and cherry flavors with an added note of minerality. It’s a bright cherry red with spicy fruit, plum and anise on the nose. It had an incredibly creamy mouthfeel and lots of character, with a hint of toast. We loved this wine and, since it was our only bottle, nursed every last drop.

While it wasn’t the wine I had intended to open, I’m glad I made the mistake.  We drank much better than we intended to on a weeknight. Plus, now that we know how great it is, we will be buying a few more bottles of this to keep for a few years.  If you ever come across it, be sure to grab some!

 
As is probably clear from my two previous blog posts about Cleavage Creek Winery and Budge Brown, they both touched my life, very likely without even knowing it.  I was one of many saddened by the untimely death of Budge Brown a few months ago and the subsequent closure of Cleavage Creek Winery. Both have been on my mind the last couple of days. Today, I finally figured out why.
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  Last year at this time, Cleavage Creek Winery and Budge Brown created a Virtual Toast to a Cure (press release here).  At 5:00 PDT on October 1, 2010, Cleavage Creek invited anyone interested in beating breast cancer to raise a glass and join in a virtual toast. Raising awareness with Toast to a Cure could be a reminder to do a self exam, take a family member for a check-up, or honor the courage of those who have fought breast cancer. I don't know the statistics about how many people participated but I saw a large number of Facebook and Twitter posts about it and I personally connected with some great new people through the virtual toast.  Last year on October 1st at 5:00, I was in wine country with my family and some friends.  We sat down at the appointed time and toasted to raising awareness, the end of breast cancer and our loved ones who had/have breast cancer.  We happened to make our toast with a bottle of Cleavage Creek Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. 
This October 1st, I will once again be in wine country with my family.  I plan on taking the time, at 5:00 PDT, to raise my glass in a toast - to raising awareness, to the end of breast cancer, and to the memory of Budge Brown and his great work.  I encourage you to do the same if you can. 
Cheers.
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Don't know what a mollydooker is? Not to worry - I didn't either until recently. It's Aussie for left hander. Which, I am! So I really am a mollydooker!  Mollydooker is also, however, the name of an amazing winery in Australia.  Thanks to the combined powers of Twitter and a recommendation by my favorite local wine merchant, I discovered Mollydooker wines about a year ago.  Since then I've had the opportunity to interact with them on Twitter, learn more about their wines and - most importantly - attend one of their winemaker dinners in San Franciso last week.  Lemme tell you - those Aussies sure know how to throw a party!
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So, I came to this dinner prepared with my camera and a notebook for tasting notes.  My honorable intentions to take pictures and notes so that I could intelligently blog about the wines later lasted, oh, maybe five minutes.  Because as soon as Sparky started talking and encouraging us to drink, and the more we drank, well, let's just say I was far too busy sipping and laughing to bother with notes and photos.  Funnily enough, that isn't stopping me from blogging about it. 

First, a little history.  Sarah and Sparky Marquis created Mollydooker in 2005. The grapes come from the premier regions of McLaren Vale, Langhorne Creek and Padthaway and the winery and vineyards are located on a ridge which historically produces iconic wines.  In 2006, the Wine Advocate rated their Lefty Wines the 1st, 2nd and 4th best value wines in the WORLD under $20, and their Love Wines received 99 and 96 point scores.  In  2007, the Wine Advocate rated the 2006 Lefty Wines among the best value wines in the world, and Velvet Glove (sigh!) became the fifth Mollydooker wine to be awarded 99 points. In 2008, Wine Spectator chose the 2007 Velvet Glove as a "Classic" wine and five other Mollydookers as "Outstanding". No matter your opinion on the 100-point rating system, that's pretty impressive!!
At the San Francisco winemaker dinner, we had the privilege of meeting Sparky, Janet (Mom), Krissy and Sean. They had just arrived from Australia at lunchtime that SAME day but you never would have known it! We were greeted with some appetizers and a glass (or two) of The Violinist. Made from Verdelho, this is the only white wine that Mollydooker makes. Lovely, fruit flavors and a creamy texture, it was a nice start to the evening. 
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Upon entering the meeting room, we found a table with eight other people. I have to say, we got so lucky with our dinner company! The entire table was so much fun that it made a great experience even better. Sparky started the evening off by explaining the Mollydooker Shake.  You see, because many people are allergic to sulfites, Mollydooker adds as a little as possible to their wines. Instead, they bottle their wines with nitrogen gas as a natural preservative. When the wines are still young, nitrogen can flatten out the flavors and shorten the finish of the wine. So, when you do the Mollydooker Shake (see the video on www.mollydookerwines.com for instructions), you release the nitrogen and allow the young wines to show their full flavor profile.  (Note: the Mollydooker Shake is performed only on wines less than two years old.)  We were then able to do a taste test with The Scooter - one having had the Mollydooker Shake and one without.  The difference in flavors was astounding!

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Doing the Mollydooker Shake
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Preparing our perfect blend
We then tasted the 2010 Two Left Feet, which is a blend of Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.  The percentage of each varietal changes with the vintage. Each couple then got to create their own blends using The Scooter (Merlot), The Maitre D' (Cabernet Sauvignon) and The Boxer (Shiraz).  We then tasted each of the five blends created at our table and chose a favorite, which was difficult! We had so much fun playing mad scientists - not to mention tasting all those great blends.
After that, we moved on to tasting the Mollydooker Party Wines - Gigglepot and Blue Eyed Boy.  If I loved the names and labels of the Mollydooker wines before, after hearing Sparky explain how they were named and what the labels signified, I was even more smitten (okay, I admit, I'm a little smitten with Sparky now, in addition to his wines!). Somewhere in here we were served dinner, but that was merely sustenance to keep us upright while we finished drinking. By this time, I was feeling very....happy. We then moved on to the Love Wines.  If you ever have a bottle of Enchanted Path and Carnival of Love in your hot little hands at the same time, be sure to put them next to each other.  Each lable is two parts of a whole, which you can see when you put them together. I won't bore you with tasting notes for the nine Mollydooker wines we had up to this point (plus the five differebnt blends from our table, la la la la). Suffice it to say that there was not a bad sip in the bunch, the wines deserve all the praise and high scores they have received, and I was completely and totally in love with Mollydooker. And then came......
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Velvet Glove.  Words fail me. Perhaps you heard recently about the forklift dropping $1 million worth of wine in Australia while loading it for shipment here to the US? Well, that was the 2010 Mollydooker Velvet Glove, the ultimate Mollydooker wine. About one-third of the 2010 vintage was lost that day (a moment of silence, please).  Thank goodness, it was insured and, since there really is no such thing as bad publicity, hopefully, this debacle had some benefit in bringing Mollydooker wines to the attention of more folks here in the US. Anyway, Sparky was generous enough to share some of what was left of the 2010 Velvet Glove with us at the dinner.  We had all been waiting for that moment all evening....the moment when they brought out the beautiful, unique bottle with the real velvet label printed in silver foil, the beautiful purple juice being poured into our glass.  A hush fell over the room.  We sipped, and then angels sang.  Okay, not really but there was a whole lot of ooohing and ahhhing going on. This was the perfect end to a wonderful evening - this gorgeous, complex Shiraz with flavors of fruit that go on forever. Honestly, drinking this was definitely a wine epiphany I will always remember. 
Bottom line, really, is that if you have the opportunity to taste any of the Mollydooker wines, run, do not walk, to take advantage of the opportunity. Mollydooker does have a warehouse in Napa so if your local wine merchant doesn't have these wines, you can order from their website and have it delivered here in the US.  I promise, you won't be sorry.  In the meantime, I will be anxiously awaiting International Mollydooker Day (September 15th) and the release of the 2010 wines, and particularly delilvery of my order. Trust me, there will be a party!

Many thanks to Mollydooker for the wonderful experience (with special thanks and a shoutout to Krissy!). You have new fans for life. We can't wait to see you again next year.
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End of evening carnage. The sign of good times!
 
We just returned from a wonderful vacation to France.  The first week of our trip was spent in the Loire Valley, which meant, of course, wine tasting and chateaux.  We drank a lot of great wine while we were there but there was one in particular that surprised me by capturing my heart:  Cour-Cheverny, made from the ancient Romorantin grape. 
Cour Cheverny is a small commune located in the Loire-et-Cher department of the Centre region of France in the Loire Valley. The Cour Cheverny Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée (AOC) was recognized in 1997 (some sources say it was 1993) and the sole varietal grown in this region is Romorantin.  According to legend, the Romorantin grape was introduced to the Loire by King Francis I of France in 1519 and planted near Romorantin castle.  Romorantin was once widely grown in the Loire but is now found only in the Cour Cheverny region.  A sibling of Chardonnay, Romorantin produces dry, minerally white wines which are characterized by a long finish. While enjoyable in their youth, they also have huge potential for aging.  
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The largest producer of Cour Cheverny wines is François Cazin but we chose to try some from smaller and lesser known producers.  The first place we visited was Christian Tessier et Fils Domaine de la Desoucherie.  The vineyard is situated on the highest peak of Cour Cheverny and comprises about 25 hectares.  We quite enjoyed his rouge (made from Pinot Noir and Gamay), as well as the Cremant de Loire, but it was the Cour Cheverny made from 100% Romorantin that stole our hearts.  Aged 12 to 18 months in the bottle, this is a dry wine, crisp, fleshy, pale yellow with aromas of ripe fruit and a hint of acacia flowers. It has an aging potential of 8 to 10 years and pairs well with grilled fish, poultry and (my favorite) chevre. 
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Our second favorite producer of Cour Cheverny was the better known Domaine Philippe Tessier (no relation as far as we could tell).  While our favorites here were the Cuvee Le Point du jour 2009, made from 75% Pinot Noir and 30% Gamay, and the Cuvee Cabernet 2009, made from 100% Cabernet Franc, their Cuvee Domaine and Cuvee Les Sables 2008 Cour Chevernys were fabulous as well. 
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We bought a few bottles at each place (as well as others we visited) and drank several of them in the evenings back at the wonderful 200 year-old stone gite we were staying in.  Since I am not a big white wine drinker and I do not like (gasp!) Chardonnay (blasphemy, yes, I've heard it before), I was surprised to find that I kept coming back to the Cour Cheverny, tasting it, sniffing it, even thinking about it when I wasn't drinking it.  While still in France, I did a bit of research and found that Cour Cheverny wine is VERY difficult to find here in the US.  I guess it stands to reason that since growth and production is so small it hasn't made its way here in droves, AS IT SHOULD HAVE!  In talking about this with Jason, he wondered if part of my crush wasn't situational - drinking it in France while on vacation, sitting outside in the heat of a gorgeous evening,etc.  I suppose he could have a point but there is only one way to find out!  Thanks to www.wine-searcher.com, I was able to locate some Cour-Cheverny wines here in the US that could (for a price) be shipped to me.  I'm looking forward to tasting them again this summer and seeing if our holiday romance can stand the test of everyday life!  I'll report back....
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In the meantime, stay tuned for my next Loire Valley wine-related post about the most amazing winery, and wine, we experienced on our trip.  Cheers!