WBW #66: Your Tenderest Two-Some, Dessert & Wine

Argyle Brut Rosé (2007)
Argyle Winery
52% Pinot Meunier | 48% Pinot Noir
Dundee Hills, OR

So today is Wine Blogging Wednesday #66 which is being hosted by Jennifer Hamilton, The Domestic Goddess. Combining two of my favorite things, Jennifer has joined WBW with Sugar-High Friday for today's challenge. We were asked to come up with a dessert and wine pairing.

Desserts can sometimes be difficult to pair with wines, and I think many of us first just jump to sweeter wines. Rule of thumb there is to make sure your wine is as sweet of not sweeter than your dessert, otherwise it'll taste sour. Also keep in mind tangy/tart flavors vs. savory/milky ones in your desserts. Based on that (is it apple pie or chocolate mousse?) you'll want to pay attention to the wine's acidity.

Since I tend to gravitate towards more acidic wines, and away from overly-chocolate'd (I know, there's not supposed to be such a thing... just think, more chocolate for you!) desserts my thoughts got a little bubbly. Lucky for us, Argyle is less than 30 minutes from here!

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New site has launched & stuff

So my attentiveness to my writing here has been horrible this month. I've got some interesting wines to try tonight that I'll take some notes on, and tomorrow I'll be joining a bunch of other bloggers for Wine Blogging Wednesday. We're pairing wine and desserts, which I'm super excited about.

In other news, I've launched my personal website - www.ryanreichert.com. This will be a central place for me to showcase all my writing (concerning wine, food, travel and whatnot), photos, and to post news about what's going on in my life. I hope you'll all check it out soon and please let me know what you think.

Here's to drinking more wine and writing about it!

Cheers

Ryan

Fast and Dirty... I mean, Dark & Delicious!

Okay - so this is sort-of, kind-of last minute... but I've got two tickets to give away for Dark & Delicious, a super fantastic event featuring Petite Sirah (with an I!) put on by PS I Love You.

The event is taking place on February 19, 2010 from 6-9p PST at The Rock Wall Wine Company in Alameda, CA (just outside Oakland). If you're a) a local or b) are going to be in the area then I would highly recommend going! 41 different producers are being featured alongside 26 SF/Bay Area restauranteurs and caterers. Tickets are $60, so this prize is worth $120 total.

So here's the deal - to qualify you must head over to Twitter and send a message (140 or less!) about why you (LOVE) Petite Sirah. Make sure to send it to @oenoblog so I see it. Given the crunch on time though, I'm going to limit this to entries through Sunday February 14th 2010 (Valentine's Day). This way I'll have time to mail the tickets to the winner.

I'll assign each entry a number as it comes in and use a random number generator to get the winner.

Good luck!

Other stuff:
1) You must be 21 to attend
2) No ticket refunds or exchanges
3) Please drink responsibly! (because abusing good Petite Sirah is a crime!)

Patz & Hall Twitter Taste Live: Pinot, Chard and Tofu!

Patz & Hall
Chardonnay & Pinot Noir
Sonoma Coast, California

Last night was the launch of the Patz & Hall Winery page on Twitter Taste Live. They divided the country in two and had bloggers on both coasts do a tasting of two of their soon to be released wines. I was really pleased to see how seamlessly the upgraded TTL is working, and we had an enjoyable time tasting the wines.

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