Vintage Tuesday - Wine, Food, Travel and Insanity

Angus and Trixie’s Tales from the Wine Trails - Adventures with Wine, Food, Travel and Random Acts of Insanity

Archive for the ‘Wine Trail Tales’


Ground Hog Day - Did the Plane see Its Shadow? Castle Rock - 2005 Merlot

I was stuck at Logan Airport in Boston all day.  The flight was suppose to depart at 9:30 AM but I did not get to leave until about 8 hours later.  Perfect weather but the plane was broken and no one could fix it   …and it was Ground Hog Day!  I was beginning to think if the plane saw it’s shadow It would mean 6 more weeks of being stuck at the airport.  I spent much of the day looking out the window at two airplane mechanics with duct tape and a toilet plunger kicking the tires trying to figure out what to do.  Then I began to wonder, if they fix it, do they take it for a test drive first or do we just cross our fingers, get on the plane and hope they got it right.  Gravity would really suck if the plane broke at 35,000 feet!

After being rerouted, reconnected and shoved into one of the only spare seats left on another plane, I finally got home about 12 hours late.  Trixie was ready with a great bottle of wine.  “Bad days always end as good days when they end with wine.” Trixie taught me that one a long time ago!

We had a Castle Rock Merlot from 2005.  We have had this one a few times and it always seems to be a winner.  After a day like today, any wine will do, but this one was quite good as always.  Again we aim for reasonably priced wine and this one was around $10 from our local shop (they know us well!)  It had a nice mellow taste to it and was very full bodied as you would expect from a heavy red.  The perfect ending to what just became a perfect evening.   

By the third glass, airport fast food, hearing the same announcement every 10 minutes for 8 hours…  “The TSA advises…”   screaming babies sitting behind me and the airline gate agent announcing “we will update you about the flight status in another 30 minutes” (I hate to hear that phrase) all faded away.  Looks like I’ll live to fly another day!

Cheers!  - Angus

Happy Australia Day! Yellow Tail Reserve - 2006 Shiraz

australianflag1.jpgAustralia Day is today January 26 and you might think… so what!  Yup, I would agree except, Australia has some great wine.  Not to mention Trixie and I visited the Yara Valley near Melbourne a few years ago with some of our best friends that live there.  Australians like to use some pretty  funny names for their towns like Dooboobetic and Wandong (I’m not making this up!) so I guess Yara is a pretty simple name.  Being from the United States, I’m sure our places also sound strange to them. New York, New Jersey, New Bern, New Bedford we sure use “New” a lot where is Old York? uh oh I am rambling. 

Australia has some great wines at reasonable prices - and they even share them with us in the United States - that shows how nice they are!  The first bottle we are going to try (well it’s not the first bottle we ever had, I think it is actually number 5,493 but who’s counting) Anyway, it  is the first one for the forum.  It is Yellow Tail Reserve - 2006 ShirazI remember my first glass of Yellow Tail years ago when they first had it at my local store.  It was only a few dollars and….   We’ll they have come a very long way. 

This was a really nice Shiraz.  It tasted fruity with the berry flavor that you would expect from a Shiraz.  It was also quite mellow or the technical term that I like to use is it did not have a bite.  You know what we mean, wines that have a bite cause you to kick the floor and grab some salt and a lime.  The cost was reasonable for a wine like this.  Although it was on the higher end of our low budget goal, at around $12 a bottle it was worth every bit of it.

Cheers to our friends down under!

Angus and Trixie