Looking for another reason to travel to York County other than hanging out with Undead Dan and visiting Comic Store West? Trying to figure out a way to convince your wife, girlfriend, or significant other to travel out to York for the weekend? Here we go.
Year round wine trail “UnCork York.” Saturdays and Sundays 1100 to 1700 (11 AM to 5 PM) offers Pennsylvania’s “ultimate wine tasting experience” with exclusive access to tank and barrel tastings. The award-winning wineries of UnCork York Wine Trail invite you into their cellars (without using lock picking tools) to preview their seasonal bests before they are bottled. Along the way you might enjoy a yummy treat or two. Tickets are $20 each and good for the whole event. This cost includes a souvenir wine glass.
For more information, go to www.UnCorkYork.com/Tanks or call 1.888.858.YORK.
Overnight, getaway packages, and online tickets are available.
The Gourmand Awards – the Oscars of food and wine publishing – gave French Vineyards the bronze medal last night in Paris. The book took 3rd place in the Best in the World wine tourism books. My thanks go to Edouard Cointreau and his panel of judges, and my congratulations to the winner Paul Strang for is excellent book on Southwest France and to Elmary Swart and Izac Smith in second place with The Essential Guide to South African Wines.
I picked up the book, Home Winemaking Step-by-Step by Jon Iverson at a winery back in ‘08 while on vacation. I eager read it, suffered sticker shock, and the book has since been quietly occupying space on my book shelf. Well over the holidays the topic of wine making came up and a couple relatives said that they make wine, and it’s not really that difficult. The idea has been rolling around in the back of my mind ever since. I couple weeks back, I saw an on PBS Create for a complete wine kit for $65. That pushed me over the edge. I knew that for $65, the kit couldn’t be worth having, but I’d decided to give wine making a go.
A friend, who’s embarking on his own wine making journey, told me about a home brewing store in a nearby town that also does wine making. Based on their website, I was skeptical (a blueberry-pinot noir concentrate…BLASPHEMY!). I went down on a Saturday afternoon and quickly changed my mind though. The staff was knowledgeable and helpful, although one of the guys had trouble giving me directions when I called. I looked around and went home to mull it over.
The next day I’d made my decision and was going back Monday after work. Sunday night, the weather man was calling for 6-10″ of snow and I wasn’t sure I was going to make the trip. Fortunately, the weather man was mistaken and the snowfall did not result in any accumulation. I picked up one of their wine starter kits. The kit was really just a collection of off the shelf items for a package price. With my first purchase, I got a 20% discount on a boxed wine concentrate kit, so I picked up a Vintner’s Reserve Pinot Noir.
I have started re-reading Home Winemaking Step-by-Step and picked up a couple of books from the library. I hope to start the process this weekend.
Nearly finished our first Intermediate Certificate course and have scheduled the Advanced Certificate for the 12th March.
Monday 15 March 2010
until Monday 21 June 2010
Duration & Times: 12 Monday Evenings 7pm to 9.30pm No of sessions: 12 |
The Advanced certificate is suitable for anyone wishing to gain in-depth knowledge of wines and spirits and builds upon the knowledge gained at Intermediate level. You will acquire a thorough understanding of the factors influencing the style, quality and price of wines from key wine producing regions of the world. You will also develop analytical tasting skills as tasting will be part of the examinations. If you are an employer wishing to train your staff this course will equip them with knowledge and understanding of a wide range of products. This course is suitable for someone in a supervisory level position in wine sales and service.
Wait! Don’t press “play” just yet! Before you watch my “Official” Introduction, I want to share several things about my adventure in bringing this video to life. First, it’s one thing to paint in your own little world in your safe, comfy studio. It’s another to do it in front of the camera, eventually for family, friends, heck, maybe the whole world to see! Second, I didn’t realize how much I swing my hands all over the place. Third, I roll my eyes a lot, and finally, it’s REALLY hard not to say “UM.”
With that being said, welcome to “Let’s Drink some Wine and Paint!”
(ok you can press the “play” button now!)
I’m not quite sure what it is about the snow that makes you want to drink, but it really does. When I was a kid, it was hot chocolate with marshmallows to warm you up from a day of sledding down giant hills. Now, it’s hot chocolate spiked with liquor, or a hearty glass of red wine, or a stout beer, or, all of the above and no sledding excuse needed. I realized this on Saturday when we got pounded here in Philly with over two feet of snow. Although I travel often and many times on the weekend, I wasn’t lucky enough to be away to miss this giant blizzard.
After an attempt to hit the gym at 3:50pm, which was open believe it or not, but had decided to close early at 4pm, an executive decision was made. Forget working out, let’s just get the fireplace going and break out the vino, and cheese!
Come 7pm, Eric and I decided to pull some non-home-bound friends together and get some good ethnic eats at Vietnam Restaurant in Chinatown. Now I don’t remember ever craving Vietnamese food on snow days before, but Saturday it just sounded good, and hey Vietnam was open unlike many other places, and it is in relative walking distance (well kind of) from us. After a filling bite of their best sharing dish- the bbq platter and a few suffering bastard cocktails, round two was complete.
On to round three; Jones- but what a big disappointment! I was hoping for one of their spiked hot chocolates to warm me up after the walk over there, but they turned us away saying they were closing at 9:30. 9:30pm on a Saturday night? And the place was busy! Not sure Starr would’ve been happy about that either!
Okay so round four, a re-tool to Varga bar which was packed and open! Well they don’t make a great Irish coffee (where’s the whipped cream?), but the Left Hand “Milk Stout” draft was pretty good.
On to round five and up the street to Tria WSW. Snow specials- yeah! Got to love a place that has drink specials on a Saturday night just because it’s snowing: $5 St. Joseph Syrah, and $5 Dogfish Head World Wide Stout. I wanted a glass of the St. Joseph- it’s a killer region in the Northern Rhone of France well-known for Syrah, but they were out of it and it was replaced by a Napa valley Syrah that tasted like feet. But the Dogfish Head was a world-class knockout! At 18% alcohol, this baby drank like a port, and had a crazy addictive nose and flavors of chocolate, coffee, and warm spices in a creamy texture. It was so good we stayed for another.
Heading up Spruce Street a little further, we landed at Valanni for our sixth and final (so we thought) round. So I have to admit at this point I was drinking water, but my drinking companions were still going- and sticking with beer at least. Not sure what kind, I’m really not much of a beer drinker, although that Dogfish Head at Tria was amazing.
The real deal
On the way home we stopped for one more, a real Irish coffee for (you guessed it) round seven, at the Irish Pub of course. A perfectly warm, boozy ending to a cold snowy night. Not something I do often, but it sure was fun hopping arouncdto all of the open neighborhood Philly bars. And do you know the best part? We didn’t even feel the cold on our shuffle through the snowy walk home….hmmmm, I wonder why? ; )
For Chen’s birthday, Nick cooked up a delicious surf & turf dinner. I think one of the most incredible things about cooking is that some of the more “fancy” dinners are the simpler ones to make — take Steak and Lobster tail, for example: A fancy dinner in my opinion, but not super complicated. This was a feast for six. Here’s what we had:
Brussel sprouts with leeks and bacon (left burner) and Roasted potatoes with jalapeno (right burner), which was extremely spicy.
Brussel Sprouts and Spicy Potatoes
Wine for celebration: Argyle Sparkling White from Dundee Oregon, Mac Murray Ranch Pinot Noir from Sonoma CA, Ramey Cabernet Sauvignon from CA, Pra Staforte Classico (Italian White), and Gaja Ca’Marcanda Promis (Italian Red). Of course, the wines did not fail us.
Prepping three New York Strip steaks, and three Lobster tails
Look at this beauty:
Steaks seared 6 minutes on each side at medium high heat, then into oven at 350 for about 10 minutes; pulled out and wrapped in aluminum foil for about 10 minutes while lobster (with shell) goes into oven at high broil, for about ten minutes. Let cool, then pull out meat from shell. Oh, this whole time you should be clarifying your butter.
