My very favorite Mexican restaurant in Southern California not only makes the best Margaritas I've ever had, they make fabulous Sangria. Sangria is the perfect drink to have with friends on long hot summer days, sitting out on your deck, watching the world go by. Sangria is cold and tangy and refreshing, and the wine adds a depth of flavor to the citrus that enhances it.
Washington's Pacific Rim winery had its start in 1992, when Randall Grahm of California parent winery Bonny Doon first released a Bonny Doon dry Riesling under the label of Pacific Rim Dry Riesling. The wine was quite popular; there weren't a lot of California wineries offering a Riesling, and the success, and Grahm's personal love of Riesling, led to the spin-off of Pacific Rim as a separate winery. As the Web site says, "in August of 2006 a small band of Bonny Doon expats moved to the Northwest from California with a common desire to craft the best Riesling in America" and Pacific Rim the winery was born, with Nicolas Quillé, former Bonny Doon general manager and a winemaker himself serving as midwife.
I realize I'm a recent import, but I'm just as delighted as a native to read the latest from the Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers. Even though we're at the start of what looks like a very bad economic era, the Washington wine industry is growing. Washington is second only to California in terms of U.S. wine production, and I'm hopeful to see Washington becoming more responsible for a lot more than the current roughly 4% of domestic wine production compared to California's 90%, or 523,000 acres. The number of wine grape plantings in Washington increased from 24,000 acres in 1999 to an estimated 33,000 this year. While that pales in comparison to the acreage in California, Washington wines are increasingly up to direct comparison, head to head (cork to cork?) with California. Washington wine now brings in $3 billion annually, from over 600 different wineries. Just ten years ago there were only 160 Washington wineries.
Cabernet Franc is one of the "parents" of Cabernet Sauvignon, and one of the varieties of grapes that have been grown in the Bordeaux region of France for centuries. In the middle ages, Cabernet Franc was
known as the Breton, and it seems to have been brought to the Bordeaux region by the Romans. Cabernet franc vines bear a thinner-skinned grape than their offspring, and tends to bear grapes that ripen a little earlier. It's a bit more tolerant of cold winters, but the early ripening can mean it runs the risk of damage from late spring frosts. It's a bit of a gamble either way, but many growers choose to plant cabernet franc in areas that are likely to have rain at harvest; the earlier ripening can mean Cabernet Franc is ripe before the fall rains. Although it's one of the five core wines blended to produce Bordeaux, on its own Cabernet Franc is described as "fruity," and "spicy," even "peppery." The grapes are blue-black in color; they remind me of the darkest blueberries in hue.Merlot is known for its sweet "jammy" taste and many would-be wine-o's may find it the perfect wine, with its cherry-berry flavored training wheels, to get started down a lifelong path of passionate red wine drinking! I speak from experience, not assumption. Eventually, you experiment with the whites and decide that they just don't really "do it" for you- where's the lust, the journey, the "take me all the way!" that those reds give you every time?
