WCI back to finish up our Townshend dinner with winemaker Don Townshend. (www.townshendcellar.com).

Now, to jump back a sec, Townshend is a family owned business started in 1979, but Don says he didn’t make his first ‘real” wine until the 1995 vintage, which ended up being an extraordinary year. Since then, they’ve grown into a 10,000 case/year winery, and they make the nationally famous “T3,” a non-vintage Bordeaux blend, and the new “Vortex,” another blend rapidly gaining critical acclaim.

When last we talked…

So far, we’d enjoyed a champagne cocktail, “Relentless DRG,” the new Down River Grill Blend to be released this week (good), a Ste. Chappelle Reisling (very nice), the Townshend ‘00 Cabernet Sauvignon (awesome), a St. Supery 2000 Dollarhide Ranch Cab (smooth and tasty), a Townshend 2000 Cab Franc (huge!), a 1997 L’ Ecosse Cab Franc (not bad) and the 1999 Townshend Merlot (amazing).

Dinner wasn’t too bad, if I do say myself. We had lamb chops served over a curry and turmeric rice with golden raisins, accompanied by grilled asparagus and a slice of fried eggplant over sauteed spinach. It held up well to the wines, and was appreciated by all, though it was really a night for the wines to shine. We even brought out the Reidel glasses (www.riedel.com), putting their Cab glass, their Merlot glass and their Port glasses to the test. Somehow, great wines do taste better in great glasses!

Now, dessert…

I love cooking desserts, and one of Don’s passions is making ports and dessert wines.

Dessert was my version of a baked apple, which consists of using a melon baller to partially core a Macintosh apple, and then stuffing it with raisins, brown sugar and cinnamon. The real secret is to then bake them in a bottle of Sauternne for an hour or so. I served them warm with homemade whipped cream, and an 2005 “Neiges,” an apple Ice wine from Quebec that can compete with the grand dessert wines of the world, and which was a perfect accompaniment.

Don had brought a bottle of his Huckleberry Port, which is truly an awesome wine. Made from 100% huckleberry juice, it is an exquisite spirit. and he had found a lone bottle of 1977 Vintage Rebello Balente port, which we poured and took to the hot tub. It was a perfect way to end the evening! Rich, fruity, beautiful color, great legs, and rare. Shared with good friends, it doesn’t get much better!

Townshend also has a great little wine club; The “Diamond T Club,” which sends out four shipments of two bottles per year, and also gives the members a nice 20% discount on every Townshend wine. Check them out!

All in all, it was a great evening… one of those where you have maybe a drop too much, but no one was driving, the hot tub was warm, and all was right with the world.

Cheers,

WCI

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WCI here again!

How’d you like to have snagged “wine.com” when the whole Internet thing started? Yeah, me too.

Well, www.Wine.com is a pretty cool site, though I hope they do even more with it over the next while… with a name like that, you’ve got to be the best, right?

Anyway, one of the things they do as well as anyone is organize their wines in their online “store,” and then offer you a truly amazing selection!

They are big on “name” wines… wine’s you’ve probably heard of, which is always a help when you’re not able to spend a lot of time perusing and tasting many of the smaller (Many excellent, some not!) production houses.

They have an excellent “Collectibles” section, where you can get your Silver Oak, your Caymus, your Chateauneuf-du-Pape, your top Barolos and the equivalent. Their prices are very comparable, and they have some oft-changing specials which are great deals. For example, right now, they have the highly acclaimed 2005 Concha y Toro “Don Melchor” Cab from Chile for only $59 per bottle, and the awesome 1995 Charles Heidsieck “Blanc de Millenairres Brut” for only $99, and this is an awesome bubbly, let me tell you! I’m actually thinking of serving it for our Christmas dinner this year.

Wine.com also has a variety of wine clubs, and though they are based on the seemingly-obligatory three levels system, the thing they do better than most is offer you almost guaranteed “No Miss” wines… Everything they send out has been judged and awarded high scores by a number of “reputable” (or at least famous!) wine critics. Now, there are lots of arguments, pro and con, about this system, and we’ll get into them over the next few weeks, but for all of the potential problems, they provide at least a fairly common ground for conversation, and even if, like me, you have never detected “the essence of underbrush with a tar finish,” you know the big boys won’t give a good grade to “plonk.”

Wine.com’s “90+ rated” club really has the good stuff, including the Jim Barry 2004 McRae Wood Shiraz (95 pts James Halliday’s Australian Wine Companion), Clos Pegase 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon (92 pts, Wine Enthusiast), Valdisanti 2004 Toscana (91 pts, Wine Spectator) and Parson’s Flat 2004 Cabernet/Shiraz (93 pts, Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate) as examples.

Also, if you act quick, they have “1 penny” shipping on orders over $99… a perfect combination for the wine lover on your list!

See you down the dusty wine roads!

Cheers,

WCI

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