I bought this wine around the holiday season mistakenly thinking it was a Greg Norman Estates wine. I was wrong tho as Norman Vineyards is completely different. I believe I paid $21 or $23 dollars at the local First Avenue Wine House here in Cedar Rapids. I generally stick to wines under [...]

Another of the $3.49 wines from Crane Lake; this time a Sangiovese. Tart, watery with a slight smoke and chocolate flavor. The tartness hangs around until the next drink. The flavor of this Sangiovese is very similar to others I have had in the past. I hadn’t drunk a Sangiovese until two years ago when [...]

I was cruising the wine department at the Marion Hy-Vee tonight in search of a “cheap, interesting” wine to try.  The Cycles Gladiator 2006 Syrah was on sale for $7.99  that qualifies as cheap!  The label has an artistic nude woman floating behind a winged bicycle.  I’m pretty sure that qualifies at interesting!
According to the [...]

I overheard a guy talking about these $3.49 bottles of wine in the HyVee liquor store a couple of weeks ago. Apparently the guy’s barber was recommending them. He was talking to one of the store employees who was so surprised by the price that she went back to verify the price! We were at [...]

Jennifer and I hit Biaggi’s to celebrate her 35th birthday.  We both like the food there and Biaggis is one of the decent places in town to get a good glass of wine.  Once again I decided on the “by the glass” menu.  I chose the Stelzner Cabernet & Merlot Blend.
Biaggi’s menu advertises this as:
CABERNET-MERLOT [...]

I picked this wine up at Whole Foods in Chicago last month. It was mid-priced at $12.99 and had some kind of in-store rating of 90 or something. It was the right price and we wanted some red wine to go with our leftovers from PF Chang’s. Although it had this mysterious rating, I couldn’t [...]

My wife has been coping with food allergies and auto-immune diseases for a number of years. She takes a yearly food allergy test and this last week found out that somehow grapes were added to her food allergy list! This is a major bummer for her (and us) as wine is something that we enjoy [...]

Sycamore Lane is the house cabernet at Zio Johno’s.  Nothing else available by the glass stuck me as interesting and since Jennifer doesn’t enjoy wine a full bottle wasn’t an option.  As it was the house wine I didn’t see the bottle and thus don’t know the vintage.  It occurs to me that in the [...]

Why would you want to use a decanter?  Isn’t it just another gadget for the boys that need more toys?
It used to be the case that wine had a significant amount of sediment in the bottle.  If you were going to pour a wine it was unpleasant looking to see a large amount of sediment [...]

2005 Turner Road Appellation Series Cabernet Sauvignon - Paso Robles
$26 at restaurant
Heavy Leather top note that hangs out for the whole bottle. Super Fruity like plums with a hint of pepper. Prevalent warm Alcohol bite spills off the sides of my tongue. Musty finish leaves a fruit taste.
I was looking for a wine that would [...]