The Real World

As the year anniversary of my graduation from college looms (how can that be?!), I realize that the title of this blog is becoming quickly outdated. I’m not a recent college graduate anymore, something both terrifying and liberating. One of my best friends and I were talking the other day about how life after graduation has eaten us up – between the full-time job, the daily commute, the entry-level paychecks, the monthly expenses, and all of the real-world things we’re facing on our own, we feel like the real world has swallowed us whole.

My month consists of a list of payment due dates versus pay days. It’s only now that I realize that the “starving college student” assumption should be entirely renamed the “starving after-graduation new-adult.” My for-fun ramen in college wasn’t necessity-for-the-last-few-days-of-the-month-ramen, like it is now. My frivolous expenses in college were Spring Break trips to New York City and Las Vegas. This pay period my frivolous purchases were a couple of $9 frames from K-Mart and a bottle of Horse Heaven Hills on a Safeway Washington Wine sale. 

But for all of these pain points, it has been an enriching experience as well. I don’t think I expected to graduate from college without a place to live and without a job. I didn’t know that I could literally live out of a suitcase for 4 months. Through the struggle to find a place to live and the almost endless job searching, I did find a job (that I love) and I did find a place to live (that I love) with both the person and the cat that I love, and proved to myself that I could pretty much deal with all of my worst unplanned-life fears.

Image from columbiacrest.com

And in keeping with a blog post torn between the painful and the gratifying, it seems appropriate to write about wine I tried this week. The first was a 2009 Horse Heaven Hills Les Chevaux ($13) red blend (34% Cabernet Sauvignon, 34% Merlot, 18% Syrah, 10% Malbec, 3% Cabernet Franc). The wine scored 90 points with the Wine Spectator, was on sale with Safeway’s Washington Wine 30% discount, and comes from one my favorite off-shoots of Columbia Crest. As my aforementioned poverty has been limiting my wine drinking lately, I was excited to store this in the wine rack and drink it on the weekend when both Ben and I had time to enjoy the bottle. Naturally, as all things seem to go lately, fate interrupted my plans and Ben dropped the bag that held the wine bottle on our walk from the car to the apartment. Everything seemed intact until we got back to our apartment and the top fell off of the bottle splashing wine all over my “rustic mudroom bench,” the walls, the open Joy of Cooking, and Ben’s H&R Block tax documents. And really, thank god for the decanter. Ben and I decanted the spilling wine and enjoyed it right there. 

Like all Horse Heaven Hills wines, this was smooth, full, and excellently balanced. I was shocked at how well the blend had been crafted, as I’m not usually a big fan of blends. There was neither too much nor too little fruit for a New World cab/merlot blend, and the Syrah/Malbec addition didn’t over-spice the back end of the wine. The finish was smooth, with silky tannins and enough dimension to keep me wanting more. I’d very very highly recommend this wine. 

If my recommendation isn’t enough to sway you, Les Chevaux is French for “The Horses” and if that doesn’t endear you with visions of wild horses running through fields of wine grapes, then you might as well screw open a jug of Carlo Rossi and stop reading this blog.

Sipping Port in my smoking jacket

This morning while kneeling over one of those irritating table-top ironing boards, I looked over at what I'm calling "The Wine Rack That Ben Built"* and noticed that it was fully stocked with an amazing assortment of wines. I think that this is my initiation into adulthood for many reasons: 1. I have a wine rack aka furniture that didn't come with the room; 2. I have an existing bottle of wine, not just a recycling bin full of empties; 3. Each bottle of wine cost more than $10.

In the wine rack I have an Alamos Malbec, a Pinot Noir from Sonoma (from Lot18.com, a great wine site with super values), a French and a Californian Rose (also from Lot18), a Bonterra Cabernet Sauvignon and a few other easy to drink table wines. I will be tasting and testing and writing about them all... but in a fit of adulthood inspired writing, I wanted to write about something that makes me feel (and seem?) rather ancient: Port.

Port is one of those things that you immediately associate with elderly men and cordial glasses. Maybe a smoking jacket, too. Happily it's not only something pulled out of musty cellars by British men with bad teeth, but it's also pulled out of liquor cabinets by my father, who has decidedly less bad teeth than the British.

My Dad loves port and first served it to us as part of one of my parents' anniversary dinners. We had it with cheese and pears, in tiny little crystal glasses. And I thought it was the worst thing in the world, besides peas, that I'd ever ingested. Lucky for me, my Dad forced me to finish my glass (isn't this backward?)... and continued to make me finish my port glass from then (I was maybe 16) on. I remember having port on the holidays when we were visiting my grandmother, and then at home a few times in the evening while playing cards. And I don't remember liking it very much until a few days ago when I had an amazing port that was on sale at Trader Joes (you can find it at Safeway too). The Warre's Warrior Porto Wine Special Reserve (normally $18, marked down to $14.99), is one of the oldest brands of port still in existence. Warre's was founded in 1670 in Portugal by the British.

Though I don't have any tasting notes to offer you, but that it was a lighter, more palatable port (without sacrificing richness or that fortified sweetness), it did pair amazingly well with the strong cheese we had it with. If you're interested in port already and want a great one, check out the Warre's. It's consistently rated between 88 and 91 points by Wine Spectator and I don't think you can find a better port for under $20.

Some helpful Port drinking hints: If you're going to buy port, buy some pairings too - I prefer Stilton cheese, but a blue cheese will work as well. I also love pears or apples with port. Though some people prefer dark chocolates, but I think the sweetness can be overpowering. When tasting the port with a strong cheese, if you take a small piece of cheese and start to chew it, then have a sip of the port, the two together will combine to become a brand new flavor. For people that are new to port entirely, it's best as a dessert substitute. Port isn't meant to be gulped or chugged, but instead is best sipped leisurely in teensy glasses while talking about your land holdings and your impudent serfs.

*"The Wine Rack That Ben Built" is a long story with a happy ending. About a month and a half ago, as I went to order a wine rack on Amazon.com, Ben decided he was going to make me one. He designed a rack in class, calculated the angles, the lengths, the sizing... and then we went to Lowes, where it cost more than the online wine rack to buy the cart full of tools and supplies. A few mis-cuts, a few more trips to Lowes, one injured shoulder muscle, and weeks and weeks later: he was able to finish it. In summation: it may have taken forever and cost more than the $30 rack on Amazon, but it's gorgeous and a lot more love went into building it than would have gone into a credit card swipe.

To Mendoza, Argentina

Besides near-constant ironing and waking up at 6:45 am every morning, I've realized that being a grown up means trying to have sophisticated, really delicious, super-successful dinner parties where everyone looks put together. Though the imperative word in that sentence is trying, I think that slowly but surely, we're getting closer to that goal (we've even started to like goat cheese!). The other night, I needed an occasion to drink a Bonarda I'd bought while in Oregon this summer, and so a dinner party was invented. Caitlin and Whitney, two close friends of mine that also graduated this past May and are also out in the work force, spent a day at the farmer's market finding great local food for our dinner. They ended up bringing fresh squash and zuccini (later sauteed in olive oil and spices), chevre and hot raspberry jam (all made fresh by local vendors), bright red tomatoes and cucumbers, and fresh rosemary bread that we dippied in olive oil and balsalmic. They also brought "The Show" Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina and a white wine (Stiegerebbe) made and sold locally by Stina Cellars. I made fresh corn on the cob, added a Colonia Las Liebres Bonarda, and made a great, simple dessert (vanilla ice cream covered in toasted coconut and fresh lime juice). Maria, one of our housemates, contributed goat cheese stuffed mushrooms that were absolutely to die for and some Cupcake wine. The evening is probably best summed up by a photo of the appetizers spread... but the wine deserves a more in-depth look.

In some kind of miraculous telepathy, Caitlin and I were on the same page in terms of wine. We'd both bought and brought a wine from Mendoza, Argentina and both of them went remarkably well with the goat cheese and pepper raspberry jam. The first wine we opened was the 2009 Colonia Las Liebres Bonarda by Altos Las Hormigas, a gorgeous bottle of I bought for only $8.99 at Sundance Wine Cellars in Oregon. It was an amazing deal and one of the best new reds I'd tried in a while. This wine was very different than many I've tried but had many of the same spicy, deep qualities of a Malbec. I picked up some cherry and plum followed by spicier notes of pepper and finished with structured tannins, giving it a rustic feel. If my ranting is not enough to convince you, this wine recieved 89 points from the Wine Spectator and frequents the magazine's great values lists. The Bonarda grape, a varietal I hadn't heard of before, is actually an Italian grape that was the most prominent grape grown in Argentina.

The second wine we tried was a 2009 The Show Malbec from Trinchero Family Estates that was also sourced in Mendoza, Argentina. I've recently started to enjoy Malbecs, after getting used to the heavier and spicier flavors that they're known for. This wine was about $10 and Caitlin bought it at Target (it's accesible!), and with such a flashy and interesting label, it's hard not to instantly love. It was a really great deal for so flavorful and full-bodied a Malbec. This wine opened with some deep fruit flavors of blackberry and plum that led into a spicier and softer finish characterized by notes of vanilla, and pepper, with smooth tannins to finish the sip. I loved this wine with our fresh dinner spread and thought it was also a good wine to follow the Bonarda, as it introduced some fruiter and lusher notes to counteract the spice of the previous wine.

 

 

It's worth it to mention that this tea-light decorated, fresh-food populated, and all around lovely evening developed rather quickly into playing rounds of Catch Phrase inbetween ingenius whisky, coffee, and whipped cream shots and everyone had a headache in the morning. So... I suppose the college hasn't quite been taken out of us yet.