Black Friday Wine Scraps?

I've been doing woefully little to earn my wine blogger stripes lately, & Thanksgiving was no exception...eight different wines, & no tasting notes to show for it--!

An intensive, 10-day cycle of 5-6 oz. of Echinacea-Golden Seal extract a day seems to have helped in strengthening my immune system & finally loosening my chest congestion. I've never been as strangely happy as I was coughing up a gob of phlegm on Thanksgiving morning-- the sense of release to my lungs was immediate.

My friend Mark, author of the Danger Boy series, invited me to join him at a lovely dinner hosted by his friend & boss, Patrick Graham, publisher of Below the Line, 'providing an insider's reverence for the craft of filmmaking with all the humor and intelligence of the craftspeople it celebrates'...this was no Hollywood turkey! Patrick is a dedicated amateur chef, & Mark's elder son Eli performed admirably as sous-chef, delivering the moistest, tastiest bird I've had in many a holiday season.

Proceedings got started with some Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau in the kitchen, followed by a pink blend from Provence, then Château Clerc-Milon, 2005 vintage, I believe...I sipped some Cru Beaujo throughout the main, sit-down event-- my first Régnié since a glass at Brasserie Le Carrefour in Paris in 1995...didn't like it as much as some '02 Chénas I discovered a couple of years ago...opened some Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine & white Côtes du Rhône to pair with the Humbolt Fog & Fiscalini cheeses I contributed, then went on to my own wine contribution: a big Petit Sirah from Lake County, a Cougar's Leap 2001 still young & dense with discrete blueberry & clove wrapped up in coal-tar minerality & alum-chalk tannins that painted & puckered up your gums for minutes after swallowing...just before heading home we tasted 'Triple C', an unusual, Cab Franc-based blend from Santa Rita in Valle del Maipo, Chile. I was just reminded the upcoming Wine Blogging Wednesday is focused on Chile & this is a likely candidate for more studied sipping...

--à suivre...