Rene Barbier Mediterranean Rosé Cava - Brut Alc. 11.5%

- Non Vintage, Bottled - Torrelavit, Spain

This wine has a nice light rosé color in the glass with light strawberries,  kiwi fruit  & carnations on the nose.  Crisp effervescence is detected on the palate.  Clean tasting with flavors of apple, lime, fleshy red table grape flavor and consistency.  A bit of bite on the finish which resembles the bitterness of grape skins that mellows out quickly and readies your palate for the next sip.

Our second wine buy of the week comes from the Apple Hill region of the Sierra Foothills just above Placerville.

 This has a really big nose.  A pleasant aroma of white pepper and plums dominate the nose of this blend without being overpowering.  The soft body of the wine reminds a bit of a Pinot noir with a bit of Syrah like spice.

This wine definitly likes food.  It would stand up well with a rich dinner,  or even for your next cheese or chocolate tasting.

Available at Cost Plus World Market for $8.99

This week was a lucky one for every day wines.  After a few weeks of complete dud's, it is nice to have something to suggest for the holidays.

The first of two wines that I found enjoyable this week is Terra Del Oro's 2006 Zinfandel.  This is one of the Montevina Winery lables and it is a straight forward Shenandoah Valley Zin.  Not to sweet, not too much acid.

This was a nice drinking wine that stood on it's own.   A nice amount of spice in the nose with the aroma of dark berries, maybe a hint of plum, leads to an easy drinking mix of ripe berry flavors.  I even got a hint of vanilla ( probably from the oak ) on the finish.

I think the best way to judge this wine is by the fact I looked over and we had almost finished the bottle.  It kind of just curled up on the couch with us and said, "Hey, what are we watching tonight?"  This nice little, well balanced wine is sure to please.

Available at Cost Plus World Market for $12.97

Rosenblum Cellars Chateau La Paws, Cote du Bone Rhone is a Red Table Wine blended from grapes traditionally used to create French Rhone style red wines (Syrah, Zinfandel, Mourvedre and Carignane).

Whenever you start talking about affordable wines, a $5.00 bottle of wine starts sounding a lot like “cheap wine”, and that of course sounds really bad.  Those of you who follow my tastes know that, on average, I usually don’t spend more than $20 for a bottle of wine.  But for me, this was a lot lower than I usually go for a bottle of wine. Even though I didn’t expect much from this $5.00 Pinot Noir, with animals on the label, I was not disappointed.

This week we had a few challenges finding a wine to share with you. I wanted a rich ripe and fruity Zinfandel. Don't know why, just did. Off we went to BevMo, where we chose two wines under $10, just in case we didn’t like one we figured we had a back up. Smart thinking…too bad it didn’t work out like that. One was from a label I recognized because they have a really good $20 Pinot Noir. The other was chosen because we are interested in this region of Northern California.