Simply Wine!

Nothing goes better with BBQ then a good peppery, jamy, smoky zinfandel! I'm not talking about that "white" zinfandel either (is that stuff even wine?!?)! There a tons of great zins out there under $20 as well!

We went to a free wine tasting at Pastiche, here is Tucson and found one of our favorite Russian River producers! The McIlroy zinfandel pictured above was $14.99 and I'd put it up against zins costing 2 or 3 times as much. The bad part, good luck finding McIlroy wines unless you are in the Russian River valley or Tucson :(

McIlroy Winery is a small family producer of some really extraordinary wines. Most of the wines in their catalog are under $20 too! Their flagship is probably their Cab Franc which is absolutely amazing! They also do a classic buttery/oaky chardonnay, a honey like Late harvest desert wine, a cab based blended called Interplay which is a wonderful alternative to overpriced California Cabernets and a wonderful Syrah.

The story of how we found McIlroy wines is interesting. A couple of years ago, we where on a mountain biking vacation in Sedona, AZ. We went to wine tasting at a fun little place in uptown Sedona called the Wine Basket. That night, Will McIlroy himself was in town and doing the tasting of his wines. We really enjoyed the wines and arranged to have bottles shipped back to Michigan. We struck up conversation with Will, who didn't have any distribution in Michigan at all. He gave us his cell number and suggested we give him a call anytime we wanted to restock. Needless to say, we called Will a couple of times since then! We always seem to catch him out in the vineyard, yet he always personally filled and shipped out our orders. Gotta love the personal attention and service!

In our year of traveling the country we had not found his wine anywhere. We could not really place an order while we where on the road, rules for shipping wine vary from state to state and we were moving every couple of weeks. It goes without saying we were very excited to find a store near our winter home that stocks these wines on a regular basis!

Ask your local wine store if they can get these wines through their distributors, you will not be disappointed!

Some of our other favorite inexpensive zins:

• Cline Old Vine Zin, $12.99
  
• Bogle zin $9.99
  
• 7 Deadly Zins $12.99
  
• Turley Zin, $60 (For that special occasion!!)
  

-Rich-

We've heard and read some great things about Paul Hobbs wines. However, they are pretty pricey, $45 and up, so we've not taken the opportunity to try them.

We found this Russian River blend at 58 Degrees, here in Tucson. At $46, the least expensive Paul Hobbs we have seen, we decided to see if it lived up to the hype!

We decided to team this up with Roasted duck breast, which just simply cries out to be paired with a good Pinot.

The wine lived up to the expectation and paired perfectly with the duck. The wine was fruity without being overly "jammy". We would have liked to experience a little more "earthiness" as you tend to get with Oregon Pinots (our favorites!)but with duck, fruit forward is exactly what was needed. This wine was also nice and balanced to drink all by itself.

A winner for sure, but definitely save it for a "special" occasion.

-Rich-

Rich and I were at Trader Joe's earlier this week and saw that they were selling Napa River wines, which is brought to you by the Two buck Chuck people. Since it was only $5, we decided to try it. It's great! It's even better than I expected it to be. We only bought the chardonnay. I don't remember if there are others. The label on the chard recommended having it with fish, chicken, or a creamy pasta dish. Since I was having trout for dinner, along with leftover pasta from lunch the day before, I put it to the test. Success! This is definately a "must buy".

-Laura

P.S. I'll fix the pic later when I have a faster internet connection.