Through the Wine Glass - The My Wines Direct Blog

Father's Day Wine Gifts

Father's Day is June 20th and the last day for $0 Delivery in time for his big day is this Sunday, June 13th. Don't miss out on sending dad a toast with excellent wines from around the world.

From Bold & Brilliant Red Wines to a Napa Valley Wine Classic to a special Toast to Dad wine pack, you will find the perfect wine gift to send at MyWinesDirect.com.

Shop all Father's Day Wine Gifts.

Our Best at BBQ

Warm weather for me has long meant trips to the beach, having drinks by the pool and barbecuing. Unfortunately, city living isn’t very conducive to relaxing in the backyard…since I am currently without one. Needless to say, my craving for grilled foods posed somewhat of a challenge – but when the challenge involves food, I’m always up for it!

Last week I found a delicious recipe on our site for rib eye steaks with gorgonzola butter, and with the warm weather this past weekend, I could almost smell the sizzling meat. I invited my boyfriend and sous chef Tony to help me in yet another culinary challenge.

We took a quick trip to the store, picked up two tender, delicious ribeyes, a pound of sweet potatoes and some fresh tomatoes. That was the easy part. Trying to cook in my little shoe box of an apartment, always leads to many adventures in cooking.

Challenge #1: How can we grill steak without a grill? Lucky for me, I made my roommates Valentine’s Day wish come true and bought her a pannini maker. I thought if it can grill bread and cheese, why not steak? Challenge #1 solved and I’m feeling pretty proud of myself.

Challenge #2: The world’s worst oven. Tony cut the sweet potatoes into beautiful wedges to make some baked fries. Then we coated them in olive oil and cayenne pepper. I should have known my oven wouldn’t cooperate. The fries were not in the oven more than 15 minutes when smoke started pouring out. Because I have the world’s worst oven, we ignore the smoke because “it always does that”.

Challenge #3: 15 minutes later…Smoke alarm (again!) and burnt sweet potato fries. We pull our half baked fries out of the oven, to discover we’re having “blackened” fries as our side dish and the fire alarm screeches. I think its disappointed in us.

Fortunately, the rest of the dinner preparations went beautifully. We heated up the pannini maker, let our steaks sizzle for a few minutes, sliced the juicy tomatoes and prepared the gorgonzola butter topping. And before we knew it, we were done. What an easy recipe!We settled on the couch, with a bottle of Las Tizas Cabernet, poured two glasses of rich red wine, toasted to another delicious dinner and enjoyed our gourmet meal. The gorgonzola butter melted on top of the juicy ribeyes and the Cabernet was the perfect complement. A symphony of “mmmmm”s were the only sounds to be heard. Cheers to another adventure in small apartment cooking. Where there’s no challenge that wine and a little inventiveness can’t fix! 

For memorial day weekend, I have volunteered to make dinner for our friends and family. I’ve sent the BBQ Bests red wine pack on its way, to be delivered just in time for the festivities. And with a “big kid” grill available, I’m preparing a meal to impress -  ribeyes with gorgonzola butter and some fresh grilled vegetables. Summer grilling season here I come!

Mother's Day Masterpiece: French Wine and Cooking

 
A few weeks back I sat down to watch “Julie and Julia”– a movie that entwines the stories of chef Julia Child and Julie Powell, a young New Yorker who takes on the feat of preparing all of the culinary arts in Julia Child’s first book, in one year. Already passionate about cooking, I was inspired – to make the famed “Bouef Bourginon” that is the coup de grâce of character Julie.

Last weekend, I decided it was now or never. I quickly found the recipe, which was scanned and posted to the web by other brave cuisiniers who have come before me. Julia – I accept your challenge and promise to use enough butter to make you proud! I asked my favorite sous chef, my boyfriend Tony, to accompany me on this culinary journey – he’s the absolute best at chopping onions (ego stroke) with the promise of wine and a meal to remember.

First things first, we opened a bottle of Lustre Syrah and poured two large glasses. Then we set about chopping, braising, simmering and savoring the beautiful aromas filling my tiny apartment. A sip of wine while cutting the vegetables, a few more sips while sautéing the meat and before I knew it the first bottle of wine was gone and we had completed the last instruction.

Our dinner was bubbling in the oven, the kitchen was a mess, our feet were up on the coffee table and we smiled at each other over a glass of Bouchard Pinot, feeling proud that we escaped this culinary feat with only one slight hiccup: while I was busy critiquing the carrot cutting skills of my sous chef, the boiling bacon spilled all over the stove. The fire alarm screamed and my downstairs neighbor rushed into the hallway. “Sorry” I yelled, while covering my ears “it’s ok, its just me… cooking…again!” All just a distant memory, while our masterpiece simmered away. Now all we had to do was wait. 

And wait we did. One hour. Two hours. Three hours. It was now 11:30pm; our stomachs were grumbling, our eyes were getting droopy and I wondered if we took on too much? Finally the timer sounded and we lept off the couch. We couldn’t wait to taste our creation. I spooned large ladle-fulls into bowls, while Tony opened a bottle of my favorite French Red Wine, the Pere et Fils Syrah-Grenache. 

The wait was worth it! The buttery meat and rich, herb-infused sauce were complemented by the berry aromas and spice of the Syrah-Grenache. We ate and enjoyed our hard work, just before midnight. And I thought, as I savored my last bite, Julia - you are truly an artist!

With Mother’s Day coming up, I think I've found the perfect gourmet gift of red wines. I’m going to be sure to treat my mom – with a dish to impress paired with a delicious French Wine.

Cariñena – Spanish Roots, Easy Choice

Since, one of our newest wine winners from the latest round of tasting panels is a lesser known varietal from Spain, we thought we'd give you some background about the grape as well as what it means when you see a Spanish wine labeled Crianza.


The Cariñena Grape


Cariñena is a red wine grape that originated in the wine region of Cariñena in Aragon, Spain. Aragon is one of the oldest protected growing regions in Europe and Cariñena vineyards are located near the center, on a plateau called “Campo de Cariñena.” The Cariñena grape is called Carignane in California, Carinyena in Catalan, Pinot Evara in Portugal, and Carignan noir in France.

From Spain, Cariñena gained prominence in Algeria and then moved onto France in the 1960’s and throughout the world thereafter. It’s traditionally a high alcohol content wine produced for local consumption, but for exports it’s blended to create a fruitier, lighter, well-balanced wine in response to the tastes of the average export consumer. Many of these blends will contain Tempranillo, Syrah and/or Grenache red wine grapes to add body, color and fruitiness.

What does “Crianza” Mean?

Spanish wines are often labeled according to the amount of aging the wine has received. Some wines are meant to be consumed very young while others will benefit from some time aging in oak barrels and then in the bottle. The term ‘Crianza,’ meaning ‘breeding’ or ‘upbringing,’ refers to red wine that has been aged at least 2 years, with at least 6 months of that time being in oak barrels. On the other hand, Crianza whites and rosés must be aged for at least 1 year, 6 months of that time in oak as well.
If you see the words “Sin Crianza” on the label that indicates that the wine did not receive the minimum ageing and was bottled young.
 
Try our Campo Marin Cariñena Crianza 2006 and enjoy on its own or pair with grilled meats, sausage, and chicken.

The Holidays Mean It's Time for Ham!

One of my boyfriend's favorite dishes to eat is ham and biscuits.  So for his birthday, it was the perfect opportunity to try out the Mustard Brown Sugar Glazed Ham paired with the Marlegan Cabernet Sauvignon!  Especially on a cold and rainy night!

The butcher helped me select a spiral-cut ham, informing me that the "butt" portion made for better meat.  Also, if I was doing my own glaze, he suggested I opt for the honey-cured versus the hickory-smoked, which already had strong flavor.

How could this recipe be any easier?  I mixed up the glaze and set it aside, then popped the ham in the oven for a nice low and slow roast.  It filled the apartment with its lovely aroma, prompting my boyfriend to ask at regular intervals when dinner would be ready.

The ham I purchased didn't even need to be trimmed, so a half an hour before I was ready to serve it, I slathered it with the spicy sweet glaze and put in back in the oven.  I put out the appetizers -- goat cheese and figs and honey, charcuterie, mulled apple cider.  And, of course, I opened up the Marlegan to breathe!  By then, the ham was ready to be taken out.

While it rested, I re-warmed the mushroom lasagna and baked off the biscuits.  Timing couldn't have been better!  I could bring out all the main dishes at the same time.

The ham and Marlegan turned out to be the star of the buffet.  Besides being a delicious entree, a ham makes an impressive centerpiece.  Our guests oo-ed and ah-ed.  And my boyfriend was very pleased and full by the end of the evening!

Cooperativa San Carlos Sud

We recently got a shipment of delicious red wines from the Uco Valley (Valle de Uco) region of Mendoza, Argentina. I'm not sure if you've heard of the Uco Valley or even Mendoza for that matter. I hadn't, and while I found a lot of information about Mendoza on the internet, I found very little about the Uco Valley. The Uco Valley, it turns out, is emerging as one of the prime areas in Mendoza for premium quality wines. I write more about the region here.

The wines, a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Malbec are both from a cooperative vineyard that was formed in the 1980's and is composed of 51 small and medium vineyard producers. I thought this was quite an interesting story for a wine as I've never heard of a cooperative vineyard before.

The cooperative, called San Carlos Sud, works with the producers from the beginning, consulting on the pruning techniques, vineyard management and harvesting dates.  The vineyards are oriented towards specific product lines, based on historical results.  However, the final determination is made in the winery, once the wines have finished fermenting, so that wines originally oriented towards a varietal line have a chance to be upgraded to the reserve line, and vice-versa.  The members of the cooperative share in the winery´s profits, but also receive a percentage of the sale price of their wines.  Since the sale price is closely related to the the quality level of the wines, the producers have a strong incentive to produce high-quality grapes.  While the winery is quite large, the average fermenting tank size is quite small, permitting the winery to ferment individual producers grapes, which thus makes it possible to implement the quality-based reward system so fundamental to keeping good quality.

San Carlos Sud has a website, but it's in Spanish. Fortunately, I was able to use a translation plugin that translated the Spanish into English. Isn't the internet great? On the homepage is a line of a poem, which I absolutely fell in love with (remember this is a loose translation):

The wine, like love,

you have to drink from in sips,

because the two palls

if you drink otherwise

Alfredo Bufano

Mother's Day Wine & Wine Gift Baskets

Mother's Day is coming up on May 10th, and My Wines Direct has introduced some incredible deals to help you send mom a gift at a great price. Cheers!

Top Mother's Day Wine Gifts From My Wines Direct:

Mother's Day Gourmet Gift Basket  - $44.99 - Save $25!

 

Sending Joy & Love Wine Pack + Cookbook - $74.99 - Save $25!

 

Cheers to Mom 6 Bottle Wine Pack - $73.99

View all Mother's Day Gifts

Featured Wine: Broken Barrel Aged Cabernet

 We recently introduced an exciting new wine at an impressively low price - The 1999 Broken Barrel Cabernet Sauvignon from the Diamond Mountain District of Napa Valley. 

Full-bodied and muscular, it shows smooth notes of blackberry, raspberry, and cassis, plus spicy-sweet touches of pipe tobacco. It's firm and dry, with great length. An excellent value,usually double or more in price, for a comparable wine.

Wines like this usually sell for over $50, but we are offering the Broken Barrel for just $24.95.

Buy a bottle today and enjoy a truly impressive wine! (remember to let the Broken Barrel breathe for a bit before you drink it - it's been in the bottle a long time...)


Read more about why Aged Cabs are so special

The noble grape of Spain

Tempranillo, a well-pedigreed varietal responsible for some of the best wines in Spain, has had a harder time gaining ground in the US.  Christina Kelly, writing for The Chronicle, brings us up to date on this most maligned varietal.

According to Kelly, about 535 acres of Tempranillo were grown in the San Joaquin Valley in the 1960's, all produced for the jug wine market, to be blended with other varietals.  In the 1990's more acreage in California was planted, with growers hoping to produce fruit with superior qualities, due to the similarity of Spain and California's climates.  Currently, it's estimated that there are about 1,500 to 2,000 acres of Tempranillo planted in the US. Spain produces more, of course, with over 100,000 acres.

Tempranillos can be highly tannic and winemakers sometimes add Grenache, Syrah or Merlot, among others varietals, to flesh out the fruit and provide balance to the tannins.  Producers in the United States have even started an advocacy organization, called TAPAS - Tempranillo Advocates, Producers and Amigos Society, to promote this less known varietal.

No matter if you prefer the old-world style Tempranillo, or the more renegade style produced in California, we've got something for everyone.  Lagar Alto Tempranillo 2007 from La Mancha, Spain ($9.99), a recently added wine to our portfolio, is a medium-bodied red, with blackberry and cherry flavors.  Light on the tannins, it's finished with soft touches of earth and smoke.

Christine Andrew Tempranillo 2005, Lodi, CA ($19.99) is a more full-bodied version, with raspberry and boysenberry in the mid palate.  The nose contains hints of spice and earth.  This wine would be great with duck confit or truffled french fries, yum.

Old World, New World, you can't go wrong with either of these wonderful Tempranillos.

Mother's Day Gift Idea - Wine

Assuming Mom enjoys a glass of wine (and don’t they all…?), there really isn’t a better Mother’s Day Gift than wine. Flowers are pretty and all, but how original is that? And they’ll be gone in a week – forgotten forever. On the other hand, a six bottle wine pack can be enjoyed by Mom on many occasions, and in the company of friends and family. She’ll remember the gift each time she opens a new bottle.  If she enjoys a treat or two along with her wine, consider a wine basket filled with chocolates, cheeses and sweets. 6 Bottle wine packs start at $79, and wine baskets at just $49  (all baskets are currently $10 off).