Weekend Wines: 14 Hands Chardonnay

Its been a while since I've put together a wine suggestion blog post for you. So I thought we would kick the weekend off right with a delicious wine suggestion. I don't drink a lot of wine that isn't from British Columbia, but a work friend gave me a bottle of Chardonnay from 14 Hands Vineyards in Washington, USA.

Keith Kenison is the winemaker at 14 Hands and has a really interesting philosophy on wine making that clearly works well for them. His philosophy is to "let the fruit express itself" which in my opinion, it truly does. I loved the fruity yet dry taste of this chardonnay and how unique it is from other chardonnays I have tasted in the past. Keith also says  "I guide the wine [it] to its final destination with as few manipulations as possible, making every decision by taste because, ultimately, that's what matters to the person buying a bottle." Who wouldn't want to taste a wine made with that particular philosophy?

Here are the tasting notes from the 14 Hands website for the 2011 Chardonnay:

"Aromas and flavors of fresh apple with subtle hints of vanilla and buttery caramel. On the palate, notes of sweet oak and spice give way to a soft, lingering finish."

I would recommend this wine to anyone who likes a relatively dry and oak-y tasting wine. It is a unique twist on a typical chardonnay while staying true enough to the traditional chardonnay flavour that it is sure to please lovers of chardonnay! Have you tried this wine before? Have you tried other varietals from this vineyard? Let me know in the comments below! I would love to hear from you.

Cheers!

Sirena Gelato Cafe - Fairhaven, WA

A few weeks ago I went with my sister to keep her company on a weekend trip to Bellingham Bay in Washington. She was headed down there to run the Bellingham Bay 1/2 Marathon (Go Sister!!). We went down a day early to do some sightseeing in the area, as the only place we'd ever seen in Bellingham was the mall and the airport! It is really a beautiful area and definitely worth checking out. We visited the neighboring town of Fairhaven. It was lovely - we wandered around the historic area of town, browsing in little boutique stores and window shopping. We stopped in at an awesome gelato cafe called Sirena. It was packed in there so we thought it must be good and we were not disappointed!

Sirena offers 20 flavours of fresh made-in-store gelato every day! They have a flavour rotation of 50 flavours!! Wow! And they all looked delicious! It was really hard to choose which ones to try. Their gelato is made with milk instead of heavy cream which results in it being considerably lower in fat than regular ice cream - their in-store comparison notes that it has 4-8% fat content while many commercial brand ice creams contain up to 18% fat! They also serve various types of sorbets which contain less than 1% fat in each serving. How exciting! A delicious dessert that you don't have to feel guilty about (unless you eat a whole tub of it in one sitting!!).

Check out their webpage for a really interesting history of gelato and various other tidbits. One such tidbit is that the Italians have been making gelato for over 2,000 years - surely that is why their gelato is so decadently perfect! I hope that if you're ever in the area you'll check it out. Its worth the trip.