red wine.

x-fact~when a label says "red wine" it means it's a blend of two or more grapes.

red truck california red wine 2005
paid 9.99
reg. 10-12

while that label says 2004, the wine i had was 2005.

i've been drinking this wine for years. initially drawn by the striking label, even on sale i felt it too rich for my blood and heaved a flagon of casarsa into the cart. i am not ashamed of my days with casarsa. not in the least. a girl's gotta have her wine, even if she must suffer through.

tonight my forever designated driver (husband) purchased this bottle at the little store down the road. and at a fair price i might add. true, while i could get it for 7.99 on sale now and again at my grocery store, 9.99 at the store less than a mile away is more than worth it.

let me interject something here about the "little store." if you live in a rural or even slightly rural area the little store is a part of life. though it generally has the essentials, gas (if you're lucky), beverages, snacks, it all too often doesn't have anything you would buy if you could shop anywhere else. and very rarely at anything that could be remotely deemed a "fair" price.

there are exceptions to this. and if you are lucky enough to have a little store near you, do check it out. even for wine. while my little store basically satisfies the miller light, novelty lighter, fake rose in the plastic tube crowd, it actually has a very decent wine selection. which is saying a lot considering when we first moved here the red wine used to be stored in the cold case beneath the white wine, above the half and half. /shudder.

they've got several bottles that i have and would drink, plus a few interesting choices i may not have considered in the past at my own grocery store due to the huge selection i am usually faced with there. like i said, it's worth checking out.

hey, even if it's only a bottle of boonesfarm strawberry hill sitting lonesome in the "wine section"it's good to know your options. and while i don't have this tattooed on my ass i should, there is never not a good time for a bottle of boones. (coupled with a bottle of advil, of course. but, you knew that)

i will stand by that sentiment till the day i die such is my love for the boones.

when we went to vermont for a month last year the rental place we had was a few miles on the other side of the "little store" from my very best friend's house. for one month, for the first time ever, we both had the same little store!

she had lived there for years and it took me visiting to point out the small wine section in the back. she had never gone back there. and lo and behold they had more than a few bottles of very good wine, the same wine she and i drank, some even organic, at very reasonable prices. all those years and she had been driving over 10 miles to buy wine, and here this great selection was 1/4 mile down the road! to a place she went every day for mail!

that's stumbling distance right there. we should all be so lucky.

okay, red truck 2005 california red wine. boy is it tasty. i don't know if it's because it's a blend or what, but the first sip or two does have a bit of a "bite." not quite as smooth as some, but goodness it more than makes up for it by the third sip.

smooth, and rich, and really fills the mouth. it's got a real jammy quality. not like a pb and j, jammy, but lets say you've reduced some preserves with a bit of liquid into a thick rich syrup. you take that syrup and brush the top of a thin layer of fresh baked, cooled, sponge cake. then after you brush the top with the syrup, you frost it with a delicious butter cream. repeat with the remaining two layers.

when you are done and you slice a piece and take a bite you've got the rich butter cream meeting the syrup soaked cake and you know why marie antoinette though it perfectly reasonable that the people should be happy with cake.

that kind of jammy.

this wine stands up more than well to a big meal. despite the intensity or fussiness or spiciness of the dish it never loses its place. tonight i made a pasta of pepper fettuccine with a red sauce of fire roasted tomatoes and whole spicy sausages and a mixed green and fresh herb salad dressed in a garlic vinaigrette.

it was absolutely perfect.

but, it would be equally perfect, if not more so, drunk from a jelly jar under a backyard shade tree, the uncorked bottle resting on an old battered ice chest as you lean back in your lawn chair and savor every sip.

you can take the wine out of california, but you can't take the california out of the wine.

cheers!

x.