Enophile Blog

Sorry it’s been so long since my last post. I am currently in the last few days of my college career and so things have been crazy for the past couple of weeks. Last weekend Beth and I went up to my parents house in Bloomer for a Tapas and Wine tasting party. It was a blast! We tasted about 12 Spanish wines and enjoyed a plethora of tasty tapas.

I currently don’t have enough time to post about it because I have to study for a big physics test tomorrow, but hopefully by the weekend I will find the time to sit down and write more.

Wine : Frascati Producer : Fontana Candida Region : Frascati, Latium, Italy Vintage : 2002 Price : $10 Tasting Date : 04/16/2005 Brien’s Score : 84 Beth’s Score : 85

Last night was great. Beth and I had no food in the house so we decided to run to the grocery store and pick up something to eat. We left in search of food that would be easy to make and fun. When we arrived at the store, it hit me - we were going to buy only TV-dinners.
I don’t think I’ve had a TV dinner since maybe about 1st grade living in Grand Rapids, MI. As we approached the freezer section I became more and more excited. Along the way we made a stop in the “Health Food” section to pick up some hummus and vegetable chips. Grocery stores by us are funny, they always stick the vegetarian/vegan/organic health food in some sort of out of the way side aisle - like an unwanted stepchild. For some reason this always seems to share aisles with medicine and hair care items.

Anyway, we were now again on our way to the freezers. When we arrived I was overwhelmed with choices -Fried Chicken
Turkey, Salisbury Steak, Chicken Nuggets, Ribs, Fried Fish, Beef, Fried Chicken, Lasagna, Stir Fry. . . I had to go with the classic - Salisbury Steak. Beth chose the Popcorn Fish & Chips - I guess that’s the closest thing she could find to salmon ;)
We decided to go with the Swanson “Hungry-Man” dinners because the other choices didn’t look like they would fill us up. Note: when this decision was made, we had forgotten about our chips and hummus, and later picked up a box of one of Freschetta’s new appetizers : Spinach & Five Cheese Puffs.

By the way, if you haven’t seen the Single Man’s Guide to TV Dinners ever, It makes for interesting reading. I saw an interview with him on Food TV’s Unwrapped.

On the way to the cash register I thought it would be fun(ny) to have some nice wine with our meal, so we swung by the wine aisles and picked up a bottle of 2002 Frascati from Fontana Candida.

Frascati, the “Budweiser of Italy”, is said to be one of the worlds oldest wines, and Fontana Candida makes the world’s most popular Frascati. I’ve never had it and was very curious. Apparently Fontana Candida Frascati is the only Frascati producer that uses cold filtration and cold bottling to preserve the wine’s flavor and clarity.

The wine is crisp and light, be sure not to chill it too much. It carries citrus flavors - lime/orange and a hint of almond. This wine goes down smooth with a clean finish. I would recommend it with a light fish like an herb seasoned cod. I drank mine before my Salsbury Steak because I was too scared of how horrible the “steak” would make the wine taste. It went very well with our Terra chips and hummus.

Sideways came out on DVD last Tuesday. My parents have been highly recommending it to us for months but Beth and I haven’t had time to make a trip to the theater to see it. It was finally at the small theater a few blocks from our house a couple of weeks ago, but then we figured we’d just wait and buy the DVD and see it then.

We put the movie in and started it, and within about 15 minutes we had to stop it. Not because it was bad, but because we needed wine. We had to make an emergency trip to the wine shop a few blocks away. I don’t remember what we bought, it sure wasn’t Merlot [ ;) ], I think we picked up a bottle of sauvignon blanc. At any rate, we were now ready to watch.

We restarted the movie and watched it. This movie is fantastic, one of my favorites, if not my absolute favorite, from last years picks. I don’t want to put any spoilers in here but I will say that if you are expecting this movie to be all laughs and cheers [like we did] you better brace your self for a slightly depressing but hilarious adventure through California’s wine country.