the legion of the purple teeth

I went to Rome in January of this year and I came back with a powerful yen for fresh and thoughtful Italian food. I use that word ‘thoughtful’ on purpose. The Italians think about their food. They don’t just slap some stuff together on a piece of paper, wrap it up, and shove it to you through a window. Sure, they have McDonald’s there, but it hasn’t ruined the long history of Italian cuisine, no matter how crowded that one McD’s was near the Pantheon (ugh!). Since I’ve gotten back I’ve invested in several (read: A STACK) of Italian cookbooks and have read Marchella Hazan’s memoir. Italy was a game changer. I can’t eat bad, or even passable Italian food anymore. It needs that thoughtfulness regular Italians put into their cuisine, they search for in-season carciofi or perfect puntarelle for a salad.

Sorry, I got a little ramble-y there. Here’s a plate of bruschette I made, with bread I baked at home (Pane Pugliese, from Carol Field’s The Italian Baker book), and de-seeded tomatoes I actually blanched to get the skin off (I’m usually too lazy and skip BOTH those steps). Making it and eating it was a little PAUSE in my morning. A little perfect pause. And yeah, I did eat it for breakfast!

These are some of my favorite good-lookin’ wine labels. Maybe what was inside was a little forgettable (how the bloody feck am I supposed to remember every bottle of wine I guzzle anyhow, answer me that, Gary Vaynerchuk), but the outsides are pretty memorable on their own. Does a well-design wine label help you buy something? Or put another way, are you a design whore who also has a drinking problem?

Great fonts, great everyday sipper. Last time I opened this at a party I didn’t even get to have a glass, it went pretty quickly.

I’ve blogged about this one before. This is a favorite bottle to give to girls for presents. Works out because most of my girlfriends are legitimately bitchy.

When digging through my wine photo archive, I knew I had to choose this one. I was definitely taken with the Billie Holiday painting AND the smooth rich blend inside this bottle. “So nice I bought it twice” is the original photo title.

Spotted this at a Santa Barbara Vintner’s Festival all the way back in 06. I believe you could nab it at Trader Joe’s but I haven’t seen it since. It was a vivacious Syrah with a clever little label.

For a while I was heading to Silver Lake Wine to pick this affordable and easy to guzzle bottle up on a nearly weekly basis. The label’s purty too.

I’ve been in the Seghesio wine club for nearly 3 years now, probably heading into my 4th, and this is one of my favorite bottlings from them, usually a blend of Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, and Carignane – it’s always dark, dreamy, elegant and bold. An Isabella Rossellini of wine, dare I say it? The library card design is one of my faves.

We here in this maison are fond of Mosby’s Teroldego bottling. Every single one of their labels is a work of art.

This is a bottle I dream about, a sparkling Shiraz from Australia, so jewel-like in the glass, full of black cherry splendor. I’d buy it again, over and over. And the fox is awesome too.

Another instance of “so nice I bought it twice”! This 2005 Pinot Noir was an LA Times Wine of the Week and consequently all the boozehounds in LA were snatching it up left and right. The pretty blue reminds me of Tiffany’s blue. Nice clean font. We drank these pretty quickly…yet, I don’t remember much about them except I wanted more, and it was allllll gone.

I’ve saved my most recent favorite for last. This is, hands down, the prettiest winery I’ve been to in Santa Barbara wine country, pouring some of the most elegant small production wines I’ve tasted in a while. The Cuvee Papou was as light as a dream, made up of Marsanne, Grenache Blanc (they don’t grow a lot of this in CA in general), Roussane, and Viognier and a total orange blossom thang going on in the glass. The label on this is classic and art-nouveau feeling, and I highly recommend every single one of their bottles, and not just for their looks either.

Do you have a favorite wine label? Show me!

Hey guys, mosey on over to Twirlit to read a wine review I wrote for them about the popular Bitch bottling VS. Ed Hardy/Christian Audigier’s Cabernet Sauvignon.

One of my favorite wine tasting jaunts was a few years ago, when I visited Healdsburg in Sonoma Country. I drove up from San Francisco with only one real destination in mind, the wine tasting room of Rosenblum Cellars. Historically, I had already poured a considerable amount of Rosenblum’s Zin juice into my liver, it being one of the nicer bottles you can nab at most Trader Joes here in Southern California. That day nothing was jumping out at me in their tasting room, so my friend and I meandered around the small city from tasting room to tasting room until we needed to stop for lunch and a tiny bout of sobriety. It was there at the Healdsburg Bar and Grill that the bartender, just a little jaded to death with drunk people like us, begrudgingly told us to head over to Seghesio. I must have sounded a little wishy washy about continuing on to our 7th tasting of the day, but I remember clearly him saying more sternly, “No, get over there, you’ll regret it if you don’t go.” After a glass or two of their reds, I promptly joined the wine club that day. And I’m glad I did, even though I handed over my credit card that day in a fairly inebriated state.

With my nicer bottles of wine, like the one I’m writing about today, I fret a little about when I’m supposed to open them, even though the wine club newsletter directly tells you. I just lose those things pretty quickly. I think I timed the opening of this Zinfandel just right. It was not overly alcohol-y (I call that DRAGON’S BREATH) despite that heavy duty 15.3% alcohol content. Lots of dark fruit business going on with just little hints of spice here and there. You know how I know it’s a damn good bottle of wine? Because Tony and I will drink it in one sitting, no recorking necessary. We had this puppy with pasta and $1.99 roasted red bell pepper sauce from Whole Foods. Zinfandel and red sauce is a lap dance in your mouth, y’all.

Here’s what king of all noses had to say:

“The Zinfandel Home Ranch exhibits a deep ruby/purple color along with a rich, sweet nose of crushed rocks, briery, berry liqueur, herbs, pepper, and spice box.” Robert Parker, The Wine Advocate, 92 points

I don’t remember that crushed rock thing but I love that kind of hoity toity wine tasting phrase.

Alright, this one came into my possession due to two jet-setting friends who were visiting and wine tasting in Australia! This got smuggled back to me in one of their bags which is testament to two things: one – the general awesomeness of my friends, and two – the general legendary status of my wine guzzling desires. Basically, you can’t tell me you went to any wine country and not bring me back a bottle!

Ryan and Aura did a great job NOT bringing me some boring old Chardonnay, or a Cab – in fact, they smartly brought me back a piece of history! According to semi-okay Wikipedia, Semillon came to Australia in the 1800s and is one of the key white wines grown in Oz to this very day. Two styles emerge from this grape. It can either go golden yellow, with soft acidity and honey notes OR, go pale and crisp and dry. This Pepper Tree puppy is definitely on the latter team – it was definitely citrusy (mostly lemon) with touches of green apple.

I can’t remember what we sat down to eat it with on night one. I think we had it with some kind of gargantuan salad. It didn’t work well. I think often your salad dressing will really conflict with whatever wine you are guzzling, especially if your salad dressing is vinegar based. Often the damn dressing will be stronger than your wine! But on night two, we had it with an asian shrimp stir-fry, and it went with it SWIMMINGLY. I literally let it all swim in my mouth together – the lemony spritz of the wine clearly went perfectly with the shrimp. And anything citrusy always seems to goose up boring broccoli and other vegetables.

Semillon is not my favorite white, although I definitely prefer it over Sauvignon Blancs and buttery Chardonnays. Lately, I’ve become a happy little Viognier girl, but I certainly appreciate how far this wine had to travel to get to my dinner table. Thanks again, Ryan and Aura!

PS – that bird statue was found by the BF just a handful of houses down from us. It was just sitting on top of the garbage. It looks like the Maltese Falcon but it’s not. He likes posing with my wines, so far.

Alright, first things first. I bought this guy at Whole Foods. It had the little “What Steve is Drinking” tag on it. Steve is the wine dude for the Whole Foods in Glendale and I’ve had many a knowledgeable, interesting wine-oriented convo with him. He wasn’t around though, and it was just RIGHT THERE in front of me and sometimes that’s enough to get me to buy something. Yeah, its mere existence will cause me to buy it.

Strike one, not Steve’s fault. The bag boy at Whole Foods just dumped it into the same bag with other groceries. No outer protective bag. Nope. Just swimming in there with little packages of yogurt and pasta and OTHER JARS. It was ridiculous.

Strike two, I can’t remember anything about it except it was wine. It was French. I’ve always been wary of the whole French wine world because it is completely set up around you feeling clueless and powerless and poor.

Strike three, I mentioned how callously my wine was treated on my Facebook page…only to be chastised by not ONE, but TWO wine-store-owning friends. “This is what you get for buying wine at the grocery store!” Argh! They caught me! And it’s true. Or only mostly true. Maybe had I spoken to Steve pre-purchase we coudl have discussed the wine’s characteristics and I would have known that a medium-bodied Cotes Du Rhone is not my bag, baby.

I usually stick to California wines in a lame/noble? attempt to support local industry. Am I being an awesome American or a retarded prude? It’s just that you can find SO MUCH tasty, affordable stuff made right here in California…

No seriously. Can I prove it to you?

I stalk this grape. I stalk Mourvèdre and Petite Verdot because everyone else is out chasing cult cabs and princess-y pinot noirs like they are the blonde square-jawed jocks and privileged prom queens of the wine world. To me, Mourvèdre is the new foreign exchange student. He is swarthy, bold. He looks like he plays the guitar. Probably speaks French and Spanish. Okay I’m getting a little carried away. This is what happens when you drink too much, kids!

This bottle was recommended to me by Steve, the knowledgeable wine dude at the Glendale Whole Foods. He always seems to show up just in time to give me the inside track. He sees he holding a cheap bottle of Malbec and I ask about it. “Ehhh, try this, this is bolder. Do you cook? Do you LIKE to cook?” He explains that this Spanish blend of Monastrell (what they call Mourvèdre in Spain), Cabernet Sauvignon, and a little Tintorera goes perfectly with certain flavors in Spanish cuisine. I know this sounds…very W.C. Fields-ish but I love wine with breakfast on leisurely Sunday mornings. I don’t get TANKED, people. But a nice mouthful or two of nicely paired wine with a breakfast followed by plenty of water is not a cardinal sin. And I should know, after 12 grueling years of Catholic school.

And? Steve the wine dude from Glendale Whole Foods (STWDFGWF?) advised me to enjoy this tannic and dry red wine with a food item that’s been goosed up with some kind of Spanish flavoring. The onions in the frittata were fried with Spanish smoked paprika which danced well with the tart, dark fruit flavors in the wine. I grated some Iberica Spanish cheese on top (because everything always needs cheese) and that too was a perfect match for the wine, which proves once again the conventional wine wisdom you should sip wines with the native foods made nearby (mmm, I just thought of Santa Maria BBQ tri tip sandwich with a Santa Barbara syrah…) Strangely enough, upon opening, it went perfectly with the fried paprika-spiked frittata and could do battle with the onions, the potatoes and the cheese without being drowned out. Enticing, rich and warm on the nose, a hefty-ish alcohol level, lovely and dark in the glass. And one day later the wine was perfect on its own – it had mellowed out just a bit, and was much less unruly and bold. And fine, if you’re one of those people that insist on knowing, Robert Parker gave this bottling a solid 92 points. At $11 a bottle, I can totally go back to get another one and just have it with tapas – thick ribbons of Serrano ham, hunks of Manchego, some spicy chorizo? Yeah, the good stuff.

Buy it at Wine.com