Wine-ing

Wine drinking is something I missed while I was pregnant and nursing, and now that I've been "back in the game" almost a year, I'm finally making up some ground of trying new wines.

I've gravitated toward some interesting blends and even "table wines" recently, so I thought I'd share a bit about them.

In my opinion, the king (queen?) of all white table wines is Conundrum. If you haven't had this, you MUST. At the very least, find it and give it as a hostess or house-warming gift to a white-wine aficionado. It has one of the most complex lovely flavors that changes as it warms up, and it goes with absolutely everything to eat (or nothing to eat, as maybe we've done around here occasionally). They don't list the grape varietals, but who cares what it is if it's delicious? It runs about $25/bottle, so not an everyday wine, but the perfect special-occasion white wine.

A red blend I discovered very recently that I enjoy is Bliss Schoolhouse Red. Again labeled as a "table wine" -- I need to get that negative association out of my head -- this blends at least four grape varietals, and I think it could go with about any food. I've had it with pasta and meat, both of which went excellently. It's fruity, yet just glides down smoothly. Pricing for this is more moderate than Conundrum, more in the $15 range.

I have two new blends I just found that I want to try. One is Blue Jean California red wine, which looks to have an intriguing varietal combination. The other is Hare's Chase red blend Barossa Valley, which has to be at least partly wonderful because it includes shiraz from the Barossa Valley. If you haven't had Barossa shiraz of any type, you must try that sometime too -- blended or otherwise.

I'll update once we've tried the Blue Jean and Hare's Chase to let you know how they are. In the meantime, I'm open to any and all recommendations.