Weekend Wine - 49 North 2012 White

Happy Friday my lovelies! I thought we could kick off the weekend right with a delish and refreshing wine suggestion from Forty Nine North! At $10 per bottle, you can't beat the price point!

The grapes for this wine were harvested in October 2012 and includes a blend of grapes from vineyards in Osoyoos, Oliver, Kelowna, and Naramata in British Columbia. The tasting notes on the Artisan Wine Shop website include the following:

This is a fresh, mouthwatering white blend showing peach, pear and subtle floral notes. The crisp palate is filled with green apple, grapefruit, spice and citrus flavoured acidity. It is a wonderful accompaniment to seafood, white meat dishes or served as an aperitif. 

I really enjoyed this wine - it was refreshing, crisp and relatively dry. Let me know what you think of it or if you've tried it before!

Cheers!

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!

Lovely's Asian Style Risotto

 I LOVE risotto, but I've never really been brave enough to make it at home. Until now! My friend D shared this recipe with me and raved about it so much that I just had to give it a try. Now, I have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with this recipe (and any risotto for that matter), so I'm going to share this recipe with you and hope you get hooked too.

I've forgotten what cookbook this recipe is from, so if you are able to let me know and I will be sure to update the source to give credit where credit is due. In the mean time, I am going to share this recipe with you so you can get started on your own risotto craze.

Lovely's Asian Style Risotto with Chili Garlic Drizzle
Recipe adapted from unknown source

Chili-Garlic Drizzle Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp sesame oil
• 1 jalepeno, finely chopped and seeded
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 4 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp sugar

Method:

1. Heat the sesame oil in a small pan and saute chili pepper and garlic until fragrant. Remove from heat and add the soy, vinegar and sugar. Set aside.

Risotto Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 cup onions, chopped
• 100 grams pancetta, diced
• 1 cup white mushrooms, sliced
• 1 cup arborio rice
• 1 cup white wine
• 3 cups hot chicken stock (more or less)
• 3 tbsp butter
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro
• 1 cup fresh spinach, loosly chopped
• 1 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

Method:

1. In a large pot, saute onions in olive oil until softened. Add the pancetta and mushrooms and saute until lightly browned. Add the rice and keep stirring until golden.
2. Add wine and keep simmering and stirring adding the hot stock 1/2 cup at a time until risotto is creamy and cooked al dente. Stir in butter.
3. When you are ready to serve, add fresh cilantro, spinach, parmesan and mix together lightly. The spinach should be just wilted. Spoon your reserved chili-garlic drizzle over the plated risotto and serve sprinkled with more parmesan and cilantro.

Enjoy! This one is soooooo delicious. Plus, the chili garlic drizzle is good on pretty much anything, so give it a try. :)

Happy Cooking my Friends!

Sluggers' Strawberry Slushies

Okay, I'm aware that summer is officially over... the rain and dreary skies have set in here in Vancouver and the days are starting to get shorter. But I must share this delicious, icey drink with you today!! This is the perfect Friday night drink to celebrate the start of the weekend. Despite being a slushy drink, it isn't sweet - it has a grand total of 2 tablespoons of sugar! So for those of you who don't like sweet, this is the drink for you! And for those of you who do like sweet, sweeten this drink to taste!

I have to apologize though... no pictures of this one. I took a photo of the mixture in the blender before I blended it, but then I got wayyyy too excited to drink this one and suddenly it was gone and I had no photos... oh well, just gives me an excuse to make it again. Wooohooo!!

Sluggers' Strawberry Slushies
Recipe from Bon Appetit magazine, August 2011 Issue

Ingredients:

• 2 cups hulled strawberries
• 1 750 ml bottle dry Riesling
• 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 2 tbsp sugar

Method:

1. To make this drink without an ice cream maker, put 1 cup of the wine, covered, in the refrigerator and chill. Puree the remaining wine with all remaining ingredients in a food processor. Pour mixture into ice cube trays and freeze until solid. When you're ready to serve, just puree the ice cubes with the remaining wine in a blender.
2. To make with an ice cream maker, puree strawberries, Riesling, lemon juice, and sugar in a blender until liquified. Process in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions. Divide among six cups. Serve immediately with straws, or transfer to a container and freeze.

Hope you enjoy this delicious drink!! I can't wait to make it again. :) Thanks for hanging in there despite the fact that my blogging has dropped off to only once or twice per week... hoping that by the beginning of October things will have settled down a little around here! Until then... once a week it is.

Cheers!

A Long Overdue Wine Suggestion

I tried this wine about a month ago and haven't had a chance to post about it yet. I figured since it has been so long since I last suggested some wine that this would be a great opportunity. White wine is a great spring drink because its so refreshing. This wine is a 2006 Chardonnay called What cha ma call it. This is a California wine that is really easy to drink and also very affordable to buy.

According to the Wine Diva this wine has "caramel, pineapple and pear aromas with mineral, oak spice and citrus notes. Toasty flavours, light spice citrus, and tropical flavours vanillin oak, crisp yet rounded on the palate with a fresh finish..."

All formal tasting notes aside, this is a great wine that will provide an excellent bang for the buck at $12-13 CAD per bottle. Give it a try and be sure to serve it well chilled. You won't be disappointed.

I hope you've all had a wonderful Mothers' Day weekend. :) I wish my Mom could have stayed long enough so we could have celebrated with her, but she will be back next month for another visit, so perhaps we can have a belated celebration then.

Have a great week! Cheers!

Summerhill Pyramid Winery

While visiting the Okanagan, my cousin and I stopped in at two local vineyards. I'm going to tell you about Summerhill Pyramid Winery in Kelowna today. I'll save Cedar Creek for another day! Our experience at Summerhill was fantastic - the vineyard was beautiful, the tasting room was very busy yet people were still receiving top notch service and information about the wine they were interested in. The bistro looked lovely though we did not get a chance to try out the food.

The neat thing about Summerhill is that they follow organic practices - most of their vineyards are certified organic and those that aren't are in the process of being certified (it takes 3 full years to become certified!). The owner Stephen Cipes says "these grapes are happy guys, they're flourishing. Our wines are allowing nature to speak for herself." Sounds like a pretty neat philosophy for an industry so known for preservatives and chemicals!

While in the tasting room we tried a number of wines including some reds, whites and sparkling. Their sparkling wines have won international awards and they were up against some tough competition - including Champagne from France! My favorite wine was the 2006 Riesling. It was so unique tasting with notes of butter and coconut. The tasting notes on the website note the following:

"Features pronounced aromas of coconut, butter, and minerality. On the palate
citrus, star fruit, and crisp apple followed by a clean lingering finish."

I would definitely visit this winery again. I thought the prices were really reasonable when compared to the quality of the wine. If you get a chance to taste Summerhill wine, I would encourage you to do so - you won't be disappointed! If you're looking to purchase Summerhill wine, you can do so direct from the vineyard or in BC Liquor stores. Cheers!

Quinta Ferreira - Local Okanagan Wine

I've been meaning to share this wine with you for a few weeks now (the story of my life!) and am finally gettting around to doing so! A friend of my husband's brought an Unoaked Chardonnay (2008) to our place for us all to try. The wine was from Quinta Ferreira which is a winery/ vineyard in Oliver, BC. The wine was very refreshing tasting - dry with lots of fruity elements to it. I would recommend this wine to anyone who likes a drier tasting wine with a nice complexity of flavours.

I checked out the vineyard's website and found tasting notes for this
wine:

A beautiful expression of Chardonnay, this wine was barrel fermented
and aged in both French and American oak. We allowed the wine to go through
70% malolactic fermentation, to maintain the acidity and gain some
creaminess on the finish. Notes of soft apple mingle with flavours of ripe
melon, pear and peach, framed together with tones of vanilla, caramel,
coconut and hazelnut. Enjoy now and over the next two years. Wonderful with
seafood, cheeses or on its own.

I enjoyed this wine and hope you do to! You should be able to pick up a bottle at your local liquor store for around $20 per bottle. Cheers!