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!!)