8 Crazy corks: August 6, 2011

After a quick stop back at Wendy’s house to eat some real food and get our poop in a group, we headed out to Kimmel Orchard & Vineyard, the place that started it all.

Last summer, Jessi and I had ventured to Nebraska City to visit Wendy and she took us out to Kimmel because Jessi wanted to pick an apple. As we wandered around the grounds (and picked our apples), we ventured into the main building to check out what they had to offer, we were also after apple doughnuts because Wendy said they were awesome. We were attracted by a bar set up at one end of the building so we moseyed over to check it out… and discovered wine tasting. As we were told about the tastings and wine, the nice gentleman behind the bar told us about the Nebraska Wine Tour. We took passports, with our very first stamp in it, and made a goal of attempting the entire tour the next year when we could start as early as possible.

Full circle.

So, Jessi, Wendy, and I parked ourselves at the bar once again and got down to business. Kimmel had many of the same wines as Arbor Day Farm but there were enough for us to pick mostly new choices and extra tastings of the ones we enjoyed. The lady behind the bar had just started out at Kimmel and we had fun telling her about our experiences so far with the tour and giving her some tips on different wines that she might like.

I enjoyed most of the wines that we tried with my favorite being the Vignoles, which seems to be showing itself as one of my favorite types of wine.

After we finished with the tastings, we wandered around the shop a little (still haven’t gotten any of those apple doughnuts) before heading out to the event that we had found about earlier in the day.

Kimmel Orchard & Vineyard Specs:

      4 tastings for $5

      Apples and other fruit products for sale

      Fruit picking and vineyard tour

      Souvenir wine glass included with tasting

Lucky 7th cork: August 6, 2011

It is rather advantageous for our wine tour adventure that my sister, Wendy, lives in Nebraska City. The majority of the stops are within an hour’s driving distance from either Lincoln or Nebraska City so we have somewhere to stay while hitting multiple places.

When my weekend plans fell through, I planned a trip to Lincoln and Nebraska City… well, I planned on driving the two hours to Lincoln, Jessi had the rest of the weekend plotted out…. Potentially seven places in two days!

Random Bit of Advice: If you are doing the wine tour with a friend, make sure one of you is really good about planning stops, getting business hours, and finding out awesome events going on at potential stops to enhance your experiences. I would not have had half the amount of the fun on this trip if Jessi hadn’t been awesome at all of the above.

Our first stop of the whirlwind weekend was going to be back out to Glacial Till for the Blessing of the Harvest Festival… until we found out that it was $25 and an all day affair. It is something that we would love to go to some year but with all the stops we had to do, there was no way we could fit that and everything else in. So, we hit the road to Nebraska City to hook up with my sister and venture to the real first stop, the tasting room at Arbor Day Farm.

The poor lady behind the counter was just getting slammed with people wanting tastings so we didn’t get a real chance to talk to her about the wines, but we did get to try some new ones. The surprise one for me was the de Chaunac. It is a dryer red but they had accidentally chilled it so it was much more palatable to us than the de Chaunac we tried later that was room temperature. They had some great fruit wines (not a surprise since Nebraska City is the birthplace of Arbor Day and it is all about trees) but my favorite for the stop was the Morton’s Reserve.

When we finished with our tastings, we got to try some awesome sangria that they made with their apple wine and cherry cider (I’ll put the recipe up later).

We did not take advantage of the tour of the orchards and other offerings of Arbor Day Farm, but while we were there, we found out about a festival that was happening that day at our next stop so we were more than ready to move on.

Arbor Day Farm Specs:

      4 tastings for $5

      Apple and other fruit products for sale

      Tree and orchard tour

      Souvenir wine glass included with tasting

First 6-pack of corks down: July 15, 2011

When we found out about Cedar Hills Vineyard in Ravenna, Jessi and I were rather upset with my roommate, Puffy. He grew up in Ravenna and didn’t even mention to us wineauxs that there was a vineyard in his hometown (which is a long half hour from Kearney so the closest by far). Jessi was coming to town for a visit so we asked Puffy if his mom and grandma would be interested in going to the vineyard with us. He asked for us and found out that his grandma would be if she wasn’t busy that evening.

Jessi picked me up from work and we headed straight for Ravenna as fast as her little Rav4 would go, but it wasn’t fast enough. Grandma Liz beat us there. Come to find out, she is friends with the owners of Cedar Hills and was enjoying a glass of wine with them when we arrived.

She helped the one of the owners explain to us how the tastings go and we settled in to try their wines. The owner brought us some homemade foccia bread and olive oil dip to enjoy with our wines before joining us at our table. They offered the most fruit wines that I have seen so far and during our conversation with them, Jessi and I found out that all (or almost all) of the fruit for the wines was grown on the property. They also had a full kitchen for meals and amazing pies (go for the strawberry rhubarb).

Toward the end of our list, Jessi and I struck up a conversation with Paul (Cedar Hills is owned by Paul and Joyce Sears) about the different sangrias he had been making and different vintages of wines they were planning. He was mixing their different wines with various fruits that they grew (his favorite was one made with La Crosse and blackberries) plus thinking about trying a strawberry-rhubarb wine for next year. Jessi and I jumped with both feet into the conversation and I suggested a strawberry-rhubarb sangria with their rhubarb wine and strawberries. He loved the idea and I think it’s something that Jessi and I will have to try on our own sometime.

After we finished our tastings, Joyce offered us a piece of her strawberry-rhubarb pie. Jessi and I shared a piece and enjoyed it with their rhubarb wine… something I suggest everybody try! Cedar Hills was one of my favorite stops and while I liked so many of their wines, my favorite was one I tried on Grandma Liz’s recommendation, Rossa Dolche. I also recommend trying their Elderberry wine. It is like nothing I have ever tried before and I totally agree when they say that elderberry is an acquired taste.

Cedar Hills Specs:

                  5 tastings for $5

                  Homemade Pies and other great food for sale

                  Fruit picking during the summer

                  Wine gift baskets made to your specifications

My Favorite Sangria

I told you that I would share my favorite sangria recipes with you. Here is the first and my favorite by far.

We discovered it at our first Wine and Jazz Festival, it was offered by George Spencer Vineyard of Gibbon as one of the things we could sample. Jessi and I, still being young in the wine world, thought that it was a type of wine that we could buy, so when I went to purchase a bottle, I was informed that it was not for sale but if one purchased a bottle of their white, it came with a copy of the recipe.

         White Peach Sangria

       2-Bottles Pinot Grigeo (any white would work but you'll want a semi-sweet that is on the drier end of the scale so the sangria is not too sweet)

       1-750 mL peach schnapps

       ½- bottle of white grape peach iuice

       ½- cup of vanilla sugar

       Sliced fruit-oranges, lemons, limes, peaches

Mix it all together and let it sit in the fridge for a few hours to overnight so all the flavors meld together.

If you don't know what vanilla sugar is (I sure didn't the first time I made it), it is sugar infused with vanilla. At first, I just used a half a cup of sugar with a few drops of vanilla which worked but not as well as the real deal.

You can make it by putting 2 cups of sugar into an air tight container with a vanillia bean that you slice down the length of and scrape. Mix the scrapings with the sugar, bury the bean in the sugar and store in a cool place for 1-2 weeks. Shake every couple of days to mix up. (recipe from Good Eats w/ Alton Brown).

Or you can buy it. The only place that I have found it is at Savory Spice Shop in Denver but there are a lot of places that sell it online (including Savory at http://www.savoryspiceshop.com/).

Sláinte!

Chilled is one thing....

There has been more than once in my short time as a wineaux that I have purchased a bottle of wine from the grocery store and wanted to drink it as soon as I got home. I am not a huge fan of room temperature beverages (which is probably one of the reasons that I don’t really care for dry reds) so the wine usually finds its way into the freezer to speed up the process. On the should-be-rarer-than-it-is case that I had more than one bottle that needed to be chilled (usually one of Jessi and my’s wine and cheese nights), they would both go in the freezer and we would drink which ever one chilled fastest first.

This lead one poor innocent bottle of strawberry wine to meet a horrible end.

After our first Wine and Jazz festival, Jessi and I popped our two bottles into the freezer to drink as soon as they were chilled. We managed to get to her bottle that night, but my strawberry wine was forgotten. It wasn’t until the next morning that I remembered the bottle in the freezer. I raced to the kitchen and threw open the freezer door to find the remains of my wine.

As the wine froze, it expanded, pushing the cork through the foil and completely out of the bottle. Amazingly, it didn’t break the bottle, but it did make a mess of frozen, slushy wine all over the bottom of the freezer. I reverently pulled the bottle out of the freezer and set it on a paper towel on the counter and set out to clean up the mess… I might have wiped away a tear or two during the sad project.

It was a sad, sad day in the life of this wineaux, but looking back, it was rather cool to see. I would have put money on the bottle being broken when I found it.

“What did you do with the wine after it thawed out?” you might ask me. Well, I did what any good wineaux would do… or maybe it’s more of what anybody who hates wasting alcohol would do.
      
We drank it. It wasn’t good. Lesson learned.

The 5th cork makes a team: July 8, 2011

A random little jaunt on our tour led us to the WunderRosa Winery in Roca. Jessi had called ahead and the owners were kind enough to open a half an hour early so we would have enough time for the tasting before meeting my sister to bring me back to Kearney. We got there shortly after a larger group of older wine lovers and set up shop at a table by a window that looked out over the vineyard. We snatched wine lists and picked out the ones we wanted to try.

Jessi and I kind of kept to ourselves while the larger group did their tastings, only leaving our table when they had gone back to the seating area they staked out before we arrived. They got done with their tastings before we did and settled in to enjoy a glass of wine and the bruschetta bar.

This is when we got down to what we do best. Jessi and I parked ourselves at the bar and chatted with Brandy, the intern, about the winery. We also told her about our wine tour stops and the plans for the rest of our adventure.

We found out that she had been visiting Nebraska vineyards/wineries and tasting rooms also and blogging about them on her own site (amoradevine.tumblr.com if you want to check it out). Another group of visitors put the kibosh on our conversation, but as Jessi and I retreated back to our table with our glasses of wine, we continued to talk about the idea of blogging about our adventure. This blog is, of course, the result of that little chat over a glass of WunderRosa wine… I believe mine was my favorite of the tasting, the HR Blush 2010.

We had a good time at WunderRosa. The conversation was very enlightening and the environment was comfortable. Jessi gets to go back soon, but I’ll let her tell about that adventure.

WunderRosa Winery Specs:

      4 tastings for $5

      Glass of wine $5

      Souvenir wine glass included with tasting

4 makes a cork-tet-May 10, 2011

Our final stop on the first leg of the Nebraska Wine Tour came with a trip to the Windcrest Winery in Raymond. This stop was full of perfect timings and great conversation.

When Jessi and I pulled up, we did not see anybody around, but there was a sign on the door that said “I am out in the vineyard, call (this number) and I will come up.” We were standing there trying to decide what to do when the door opened and the owner stepped out to invite us into the tasting room. He had been working and came up for a quick break when we pulled up (we found out later that Windcrest was a one man operation except when the owner’s daughter helped him when she was home). Not two minutes later, another couple (who were about the same age as Jessi and I) arrived for a tasting also.

The owner (a very personable older gentleman who reminded Jessi and I of farmers that we knew growing up) gave us each a wine list and a glass and began telling us about the wines and the winery. He also gave us two options for tastings. We could do the posted way which was 6 tastings for $5 that were slightly larger samples, or we could do it his way which was slightly smaller samples of all 12 of the wines. Of course we all chose to do things his way. He lined up all the bottles from driest to sweetest and told us about each of them before he poured. He also had of suggestions of food pairings with many of the wines.

His list had the most fruit wines that Jessi and I had encountered up to then and we were impressed with how good they were. I think my favorite was the Edelweiss (which is nothing new, I love almost all Edelweiss) but one other sticks in my brain. The Cherry Nectar wine was very good just to drink, but the owner had all of us try something rather different. He told us to take a drink but to not swallow right away. Instead, he had us slosh it around in our mouths until it was foamy and then swallow a few times. Doing that, it tasted just like cherry pie ala mode.

When we were done with the list, we had him stamp our passports while Jessi and I told the other couple about the Nebraska Wine Tour and convinced them to start their own wine adventure. After they left, Jessi and I acted like crazy people and convinced the owner to take a picture with us, but he was a good sport about it.

Windcrest Winery Specs:

      2 options for tastings: 6 for $5 or His Way for $5

      You can only purchase their wine at the winery

      Souvenir wine glass included with tasting

3 corks are a crowd-May 10, 2011

As we tried cramming as many stops into our two days as possible, we headed to the James Arthur Vineyard in Raymond after a quick lunch break in Lincoln. We arrived shortly after another group of ladies so we grabbed a couple of wine lists and staked our claim on a table near the cold fireplace to pick out the wines we wanted to taste. Jessi and I each picked out three or four of them before going to the bar to get our first tastings and some oyster crackers to… well, I’m not sure on the exact purpose for the crackers.

At first, I thought it was so we weren’t drinking on an empty stomach, but then I realized how much they cleansed the pallet so the flavors did not mingle in your mouth. It is probably a combination of both.

While Jessi and I swirled, sniffed, and sipped our wines before trading glasses and repeating the process, we discussed the other wines we wanted to try and how our wine adventure was doing so far. We also discussed future stops and general wine related topics.

At JAV, we tended to stick to ourselves unless we were going to the bar for our next tasting until the other group left. Then we did what we had done at the From Nebraska Gift Shop and planted ourselves at the bar so we could pick the brain of the lady behind the counter. We found out that her father was James Arthur and her husband was the master winemaker for JAV. We could not have been more excited. We spent quite a while talking to her about the vineyard, wine in general, competitions that their wines had entered (and won), and about her trips to the wine county both in Napa, CA and the Finger Lakes region of New York (I have a whole other post about that so I’ll hold off for now).

Then she brought up the topic of Port. According to wikipedia, port is a wine that has had “neutral grape spirit” added to it to stop the fermentation process and to keep a lot of the sugar in it. It also usually has a higher alcohol content and is usually drank in small quantities in place of a dessert after dinner and is strictly made in Portugal (if it is made somewhere else, it has to be called something else, much like champaign is only made in the Champaign region of France and a similar beverage made elsewhere is often times called sparkling wine). Port is something that I have always been afraid to try because I am slightly afraid of super dry wines. She talked us into having a taste of their port-like wine, Tropasti (read the name backwards and smile). Jessi and I were both pleasantly surprised. It was not at all what I imagined and I rather liked it.

Now, I do not consider myself a wine critic at all and I know that everybody has their own taste in wines. With that being said, I did not care for many of the wines that JAV offered. I recognized the quality of the wine, but most did not fit into what I look for in a wine. My favorite wine from James Arthur was the 2010 2 Brothers, and from the extra marks I put next to it on the page, I think I really enjoyed it!

James Arthur Specs:

            2 options for tastings: 4 tastings for $4 or 6 tastings for $5

Great wine-related items for sale in tasting room including costumes to dress up wine bottles, decorated decanter and glass sets, and wineaux t-shirts

You can purchase their wines at the vineyard and all over Nebraska

Souvenir wine glass included with tasting

Misadventures with Mead

I have always been fascinated with Medieval Europe (mostly Medieval England) and one part of that is mead which is a wine made from honey instead of grapes. As I’ve said before, my mom has been making wine for as long as I can remember and I didn’t think it would be much harder to make mead. I extensively researched different mead-making techniques (which means I googled “making mead” and trudged through the thousands of results until I found a simple recipe that I could make in my kitchen) and began gathering what I would need:

                  Honey

                  Spring Water

                  Oranges

                  Raisins

                  Yeast

                  Balloon

                  Gallon Jug

                  Cloves and cinnamon sticks (optional)

 I probably should have known better than to use the recipe I went with because it said that I could make the mead in the plastic gallon jug that the water came in. This would lead to my ultimate defeat… but more on that later.

I had been planning on making the mead for a while before I actually started the process so in the meantime, I ordered a dozen Bordeaux bottles and corks from cabelas.com (I work for Cabela’s so the discount was nice) in addition to enough bottle sterilizer mix for all of those bottles plus more. When everything arrived, I bought all of the other items that I would need and set out to create my honey wine.

            It all started with dumping about half of the gallon of water into a bowl and adding the rest of the ingredients to the jug. The honey and raisins were easy, the oranges were a little difficult to get into the jug. (Here you could add the cloves and/or cinnamon sticks for a stronger flavor.) The raisins, I found out, were not for flavor but to give the yeast something to eat since honey does not contain the kind of sugar that yeast likes. Then I poured enough of the water back into the jug to fill it up before stretching the balloon across the mouth of the jug and taping it on. Then I had to prick a little pinhole into the balloon so it would not blow off during fermentation.

            The initial part of the mead making would take about a month, after which you can drink it (it wasn’t good) but it is a better idea to strain it (helps clarify it later) and bottle it in wine bottles. (Here you can add the cloves and/or cinnamon sticks for a lighter flavor.) Then you let it sit for 6 months or more, the longer it sits, the better it gets.

            The recipe also had an option that after the first month, you can simply remove the balloon, replace the cap and let it finish aging in the jug. I fully intended to rebottle it, but I never got past the “replace the cap” step. I did write the date on the bottle so I knew when it would be done so I guess I was proactive there.

            The jug got pushed to the back corner of my counter and there it sat for the next month or so. I had noticed a bread-like smell in the kitchen on more than one occasion (my roommates noticed it also) but I never put two and two together… until I noticed a sticky brown liquid start seeping across the counter. My mead!

            I dug the bottle out from behind everything else on the counter and found out that it had leaked all over the place. I moved the jug to the sink and proceeded to scrub the sticky goo off my counter. When I got a chance to examine the jug to see how it was leaking, I discovered that the pressure that built up during fermentation forced one of the seams in the handle apart, allowing the young mead to leak out and spoiled the rest of the batch in the process.

            I sadly dumped the remaining liquid down the drain and threw everything else away. This failure still chafes me a little (I was so excited to try something different!) but I think I will be willing to try making mead again in the future… but you can count on one thing. I will be using a glass jug next time!

2 corks make a pair- May 10, 2011

Our second stop on the Nebraska Wine Tour was the same two day stretch as the first (we fully intended for day one to have a bunch of stops in it but that did not work out so well). We set out from Jessi’s apartment early to run some errands and reach our appointment at Glacial Till Vineyard in Palmyra (they only do tastings by appointment at the vineyard but they also have a tasting room in Ashland). It was probably one of the best experiences that I have had on the tour so far. We were slightly confused when we arrived because there was no obvious door to enter, but once we were pointed in the right direction by one of the owner’s sons, we were on our way to a great time.

From what I could gather (but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), Glacial Till is a family owned operation that a lot of the day to day workings of the vineyard are handled by the owner’s three sons. The oldest was the one to point us correctly, the middle son was the one who gave us the tour, and the youngest was busy bottling wine while we were there.

Jessi and I were greeted by Zephyr, the smiling dog mascot of the vineyard (who now has a wine named after him) and taken on a tour of the operation. We got to see the tanks where the wine ferments and ages and the holding tanks where it waits to be bottled. We were then taken outside and shown the grape vines and taught a little about growing and harvesting before being taken back inside and handed wine glasses.

Our guide gave us samples out of the holding tanks of the wine they were bottling that day and also out of the three tanks of wine that was not quite done yet. He was very knowledgeable and very willing to answer any questions we had. At the end of the tour, we were led upstairs, (past a beautiful, hand-made, wall-sized wine rack that I tried to talk them into building me one) to what I can only describe as a lookout tower that made up the central part of the building. Our guide gave us menus of wine to try while he told us more about the local wine scene as we enjoyed our tastings and the view of the entire vineyard and valley below.
Jessi and I usually pick all different wines so we can try each others and get the most bang for our buck and of all the wines we tried at Glacial Till, I do not think there was a single one we did not like. My favorite of the stop was the Frontenac Rose (probably the only Frontenac that I have truly enjoyed).
Glacial Till is a vineyard that Jessi and I fully intend on visiting again, something that is made easier by all of the events that they have during the summer (which you can find on their facebook page and website).

           

Glacial Till Specs:

            6 tastings plus tour for $10

            Glass of wine for $5

            You can purchase their wines at the Ashland location and at HyVee in Lincoln

            Souvenir wine glass included with tasting

A difference in taste

I've been meaning to post this for a while but we've been having Internet issues in our new apartment so I am sitting in BK right now posting! I will get a few up now to make up for the last week and for however long it will be before we get internet back!

All of what I say about the vineyards/wineries, wines, and tasting rooms are all my opinion. I will never tell anybody to not visit one of them because I had a bad or less than perfect experience. I encourage everybody to try as many wines and visit as many vineyards and tasting rooms as they possibly can! That is the only way you will find that perfect wine for you!

My tastes tend to run to sweeter wines that are not too dry, too tart, or especially sweet, but I am forcing myself to try drier and drier wines at every stop. I want to expand my knowledge of wine so I can really appreciate all that comes to me in the future. If your tastes tend to tread into the drier (like my sister Betsy) or toward the more tart (like I'm beginning to think Jessi) then of course our opinions will be different. I will never try to convince you what wines are the best if you never try to convince me!

Cheers!

It all starts with the first cork-May 9th, 2011

Our Nebraska Wine Tour Journey began with an impromptu trip to Lincoln on my part.
The stars managed to align just right to give me two days off of work in a row so I thought a trip to visit Jessi was the perfect way to spend my free time. It was her idea to use this fortuitous gift for the beginning of our epic wine quest. She got online to check out the passport and places that were close enough that could visit more than one in a shot. We plotted our path and set out.
The first stop on our journey was the From Nebraska Gift Shop. Neither of us really knew what to expect from a tasting room since we had only been to a few vineyards before. We walked in and I think the lady behind the counter could sense our trepidation because she left us to our own devices after greeting us. Maybe it was because we looked like two college students who were just window shopping in the Haymarket, but once we let our desire to begin the wine tour known, she was wonderful to talk to. She gave us the list of Nebraska wines we could try, let us pick out the ones we wanted to try, and offered her opinions on the wines offered. She also told us about some of the local vineyards and some of the events that they offered during the summer.
Jessi and I also told her about some of the vineyards that we planned on visiting during our two days and she gave us some great advice to make our quest more efficient.
After our tastings, we wondered willy-nilly through the rest of the shop checking out the products that they sell that were all (mostly) made in Nebraska. One in particular caught my eye. A tin wine bottle holder that looked like a medieval knight. There was no way I could pass that up ($17? are you kidding me?!) and he became our unofficial mascot for the wine tour. Sir Drunkalot now sits atop my bookcase, guarding our journey from afar.
The first stop on our tour was fun and we could not help but think that it was a good omen for the rest of our tour... and thus far, we have not been proven wrong.

From Nebraska Gift Shop Specs:
6 tastings for $5
Huge selection of Nebraska Wines including wine gift packages with glasses (they even ship!)
Fun wine related accessories including wine glasses, corkscrews, wine glass charms, wine racks, and more!