This wine is a pretty, dark pink wine that smells like ripe bananas and watermelon. It smelled like it should be sweet, but it was pleasantly dry with a medium finish. It felt almost fizzy in my mouth – perhaps it has miniature bubbles? I would definitely purchase this again!

Cost: $8 (grocery store)

Monmousseau 2007 Rose d’Anjou
Loire Valley, France
50% Grolleau and 50% Cabernet Franc

$8 (grocery store)

I liked the pale pink color of this wine.  It smelled fruity, though I couldn’t quite place which fruits. It had a pleasant, not sweet taste but the aftertaste wasn’t to my liking. I can’t exactly describe it except maybe a chemical taste. I tried it again the second day after letting it breathe  and warm up but it still had an unpleasant aftertaste. I won’t buy this one again.

2005 Castillo de DaRoca Garnacha
Spain, Aragón, Calatayud
Garnacha (Grenache) grapes
$5.95 (Portland Wine Merchants)

This rosé was a pretty, deep orangey pink. I smelled strawberries, with a yeasty undertone. The first taste was a little bit sweet on the tongue, with a crisp, medium finish. I like the combination of crisp with a touch of sweetness, and plan to buy a case of it at Portland Wine Merchant.

Mont Marçal Brut Rose Cava Reserva
$13 (local gourmet store Pastaworks)
Trepat varietal

I wanted a sparkling wine last Friday to celebrate my year anniversary as a law librarian, and since I’m on a pink wine kick, I thought I’d try this pretty pink cava. It smelled like ripe fruit – melon, perhaps? The bubbles were small and fizzy, and it had a dry, pleasant finish. Very easy to drink – how did the bottle disappear so quickly between two of us? I’ll definitely buy this again for a fun summer wine.

Last month I met with Leslie Palmer, co-owner of Thirst Wine Bar & Bistro, to talk about starting a book club at her wine bar.  Her idea is to get a group of women together to read and discuss books with a wine connection, and drink wine selected to “match” the book.  Books, wine, food, and interesting women – what better combination could there be?!

I’m very excited about the idea, and have been scouring book reviews for interesting and new books that have some wine connection. I’ve found a few promising memoirs, a non-fiction book about nuns and priests making wine,  a few mysteries, and a few books about food and wine. I look forward to our first book club meeting this summer!

This Sunday was the first wonderful, sunny day of the year, so my sweetie and I went walking around the Hawthorne neighborhood to look at the flowers and get some fresh air. We hadn’t been in the Portland Wine Merchants for quite some time, so we stopped to have a look. We had a couple of tastes, chatted very briefly with the owner, I think, and left with two bottles of rose, among other bottles. I often feel intimidated in a wine store but the proprietor said something to the effect that it’s just a beverage. So true!

Hermanos Lurton Rosado

I tasted this wine blind, and thought the aroma was unassuming but pleasant, with a slight fruity smell. I couldn’t identify any particular flower or fruit. The color was a brownish pink. It was surprisingly crisp; I suppose I’d drunk many sweet pink wines in my youth (Boone’s Farm Tickle Pink!) so I was surprised it wasn’t sweet. It has a nice berry taste in the back of the throat, and a short finish. It’s a lovely wine that I plan to drink often this spring.

Vino De La Tierra De Castilla Y Leon

Grapes: Garanacha and Tempranillo

Price: $7.00 (local wine store)

A friend and I went to Bar Avignon on Division for happy hour last night, and really enjoyed it. We spent a lovely evening catching up, trying new drinks, and enjoying the atmosphere.

We ordered a few things from the happy hour menu – the house red, the house white, and the house pink.  All were pleasant.  (I decided not to take notes while socializing.) I ordered the boquerones with crostini…I didn’t like the fishiness of the anchovies but they were anchovies so I’m not sure what I expected! I also had the chicken croquettes – wow! My friend had the meatballs, which came with a dark pink sauce that was really nice.

The evening wore on, and the bartender created a couple of special drinks for my friend. We also tried a sayulita margarita, a simple concoction of lime, sugar, tequila with a sugared rim, and had an interesting martini with elderflower essence.

Fun place – I’ll be back! It’s in my neighborhood, so we can just walk there after work.

“In Europe we thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also a great giver of happiness and well being and delight. Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary.” — Ernest Hemingway, A Movable Feast

I agree absolutely!

CREDIT: Barton, Ralph. “Ernest Hemingway.” Published in Vanity Fair. Courtesy of Diana Barton Franz. Caroline and Erwin Swann Collection of Caricature and Cartoon, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

I met some colleagues at Thirst Wine Bar at the RiverPlace on the waterfront tonight,  a place I don’t go to often enough. It’s just outside my usual geographic range but I always like the wine, the service, and the food. Tuesday nights they have a wine flight and cheese pairing, so I tried three wines and three cheeses.

Thirst’s Willamette White (Chardonnay and Viogner) with Rogue Oregon Blue
Witness Tree Pinot Noir with Goat’s Gouda from Holland
Oswego Hills Cabernet Sauvignon with Beecher’s Flagship cheddar from Seattle

My favorite pairing was  with the Beecher’s  Flagship cheddar with the Cabernet.  The flavors complemented each other so nicely.

I didn’t take notes at the time, and couldn’t remember the wines’ names so I emailed one of the co-owners, Leslie Palmer, who emailed me back very promptly telling me what the flights and cheeses were that night. Even more good service!

If you haven’t been to Thirst, go! Thursdays nights they pour tastes from 5-8, and you can try all kinds of wonderful wine. Their happy hour is really nice, too.  My next goal is to get my husband to join me for dinner…

For my birthday, my sweetie gave two great reference books. They’re both published by DK. The first is the Eyewitness Companions French Wine, by Robert Joseph. It’s got great photographs, maps, and descriptions of more French wines than I’ll be able to try in years. It also has travel tips if one is lucky enough to go to some of these French regions to taste wine.

The second book is the Dorling Kindersley French Cheeses, which also has wonderful photographs of cheeses, descriptions, and a bit of history of cheesemaking. I’m sure many of the raw milk or unpasteurized cheese are only available in France but on my next trip I’ll take notes as I try them!