{"id":24,"date":"2008-01-29T12:46:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-29T18:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregdrinks\/?p=24"},"modified":"2011-06-20T21:09:21","modified_gmt":"2011-06-21T02:09:21","slug":"french-whites-hit-or-miss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregdrinks\/2008\/01\/french-whites-hit-or-miss\/","title":{"rendered":"French Whites &#8211; Hit or Miss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This past weekend I opened up a couple bottles of French white wine. I thought they would pair well with a dinner I was making and I was right. While it&#8217;s true that I much prefer red wines to white I have been trying to expand my palate to include interesting and unusual wines. I am getting tired of the usual California white wines. Never been a CA chardonnay drinker. I enjoy New Zealand sauvignon blanc now and then, but even that is getting old now. I want to find more refined, more complex, less sweet and less acidic whites to go with food.<\/p>\n<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_kufElHa-EkM\/R58ghA0czzI\/AAAAAAAAAZA\/K-VM76skkPo\/s1600-h\/IMG_2112.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_kufElHa-EkM\/R58ghA0czzI\/AAAAAAAAAZA\/K-VM76skkPo\/s400\/IMG_2112.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160879449517641522\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>I love Alsatian rieslings. Mostly for the fact that they pack unbelievably complex flavor in a nice dry white wine. I much prefer this style to sweeter style whites. The best one I can find locally is produced by Arthur Metz and comes under the label of Cuv\u00e9e Anne-Laure. I have had previous vintages and found them full of interesting flowers and fruit. This was the first 2006 that I have tried. It was certainly different than previous vintages in that the floral notes were less apparent (though there) and honey predominated on the nose and on the palate. I could detect aromas of melons and, believe it or not, juicyfruit gum along with the honey. It wasn&#8217;t sweet at all which I liked very much. I served this with some ham wrapped melon balls and it paired very nicely. I would say I was a little disappointed in the way the honey overpowered and I think I prefer the 2005 over the 2006. Never the less it is a solid effort from Asace.<\/p>\n<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_kufElHa-EkM\/R58ghQ0cz0I\/AAAAAAAAAZI\/R7W8E7C5NZs\/s1600-h\/IMG_2143.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_kufElHa-EkM\/R58ghQ0cz0I\/AAAAAAAAAZI\/R7W8E7C5NZs\/s400\/IMG_2143.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160879453812608834\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>Ah, Chateauneuf du Pape! I adore Rhone wines. I had a bottle of the 2003 Eric Texier Chateauneuf du Pape blanc about a year ago and I have very fond memories of it. A gorgeous dry fruity Rhone white that was extremely food friendly. When I made a chicken and cheese souffl\u00e9 on Sunday this is the wine I had in mind. Unfortunately my expectations fell short when I found the bottle was flawed. I had a feeling when I pulled the cork that it would not be ideal. The cork was brittle and you could tell that the wine had seeped all the way to the end. Not a good sign. The bottle wasn&#8217;t ruined but it was certainly off. It had a slightly floral nose with eucalyptus aromas. I could also smell ethyl acetate indicating that there was something amiss. The wine did have some very nice flavors of pears and dried apricots that were unfortunately covered up by a bitter off taste that I would compare to a saccharin aftertaste. So, this one was a miss. I know this is usually a solid solid white wine and will definitely seek it out again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This past weekend I opened up a couple bottles of French white wine. I thought they would pair well with a dinner I was making and I was right. While it&#8217;s true that I much prefer red wines to white I have been trying to expand my palate to include interesting and unusual wines. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139,62,147],"tags":[66,64,63,65],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-riesling","category-white-blend","tag-alsace","tag-arthur-metz","tag-chateauneuf-du-pape","tag-rhone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregdrinks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregdrinks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregdrinks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregdrinks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregdrinks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregdrinks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170,"href":"https:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregdrinks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregdrinks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregdrinks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregdrinks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}