Thank God for Wine Blogging Wednesday. Well, it’s Thursday — but even a day late, at least something got me to blog again. Caught up in various inspections and preparations for the brick and mortar, I’ve really not been paying enough attention to what got me in this business in the first place.

So it was perfect timing yesterday when one of my reps brought me this “Homecoming” Zinfandel from Homefire Cellars. It represents a homecoming to blogging for me, as well as a return to Dry Creek Valley. There, Doug Nalle generously took a few hours of his day, a few years ago, to usher me around to several area wineries, primarily Zin producers. Soon thereafter, my blog and online wine store were born. Since then, I admit that Zinfandel hasn’t been my favorite grape variety. It’s fairly rare that I drink it, and I don’t stock too many.

But the Homefire Ranch “Homecoming” Zinfandel is really pleasing. It’s got classic Zin characteristics, with really juicy red fruit and some spicy peppery zest. It avoids going overboard in terms of heat or body, and I’d guess this is lightly oaked. There’s nothing out of balance about this wine at all, and it makes me think that I’ll have to give Zins, and Dry Creek, some more serious consideration in the near future. I may even put a case of this on my about to be stocked racks!

Thanks to Sonadora at Wannabewino for hosting edition #60 of WBW. See you back here soon, I hope!

Thanks to Remy at Wine Case for picking a fun theme, “North vs. South,” for the latest installment of the monthly wine blogging meme known in wine-nerd shorthand as “WBW.” The one restriction, per Remy, is that we make sure the grape from each place is the same. Otherwise, we would be free to explore wines made from two wine regions, so long as they’re latitudinally distinct!

My pick? The Rhone region of France — and, as I tend to do, I’m bending the rules slightly. As most of you probably know, Northern Rhone wines are Syrah-based, and Southern Rhone wines are generally Grenache-based. I’ve chosen two wines that contain Syrah, but one of them contains 100% Syrah and the other only 30%. Hopefully Remy will forgive me. In fact, I sampled both of these wines a couple of weeks back at a trade tasting highlighting Rhone wines mostly from the 2007 vintage (but some from 2006). The two I’m focusing on here were among my favorites… Read more…

I had a little trouble with this Wine Blogging Wednesday assignment. I’ve never been much of a daytime drinker, and though I can’t say for certain why, it might have something to do with my upbringing that exposed me to wine about once a year, during the annual Passover Seder (always after sundown!). For those of you who aren’t familiar, the Seder has its participants drinking four cups of wine over the course of the evening.

In my family, however, the four cups of wine were more like four sips, my finger getting more of a taste of the stuff than my mouth, during the recitation of the ten plagues, in which one’s pinky marks a drop on a plate for each epidemic, infestation, and outbreak leading up to the exodus. I actually think we should add an eleventh plague, a drip acknowledging how wretched the Concord Grape wine is itself, but that’s another story.

I won’t draw conclusions about my larger cultural background having to do anything with my lack of daytime drinking (though I think it’s probably not a stretch to say that “my people” aren’t known as big drinkers). But my heritage indeed led me to my menu for this WBW, as my meal consisted of Scrambled Eggs with Lox, a very Jew-y kind dish. I could only muster breakfast-for-dinner if wine were involved, and I hope that’s not too much of a cop-out.

The wine I paired wtih my Lox ‘n Eggs was the 2007 Michel-Schlumberger Pinot Blanc “La Bise,” a dry white that has ample fruit and acidity to balance both the saltiness of the salmon, and the creamy/dairy aspects of the egg dish. I hadn’t looked at the winery notes before selecting this, but find it amusing that they consider this their “brunch wine,” and a great substitute for sparkling wines.

The pairing worked out well. I think next time I’ll take a walk on the wild side and try some wine with breakfast-as-breakfast. Maybe I’ll be truly adventurous and do steak and eggs with a red…well, that’s probably pushing goyishe extremes. I’ll probably start out with some more Lox ‘n Eggs, before noon. Baby steps!

A big thanks as always to Lenn for creating Wine Blogging Wednesday, and to El Jefe for hosting this month. Cheers!

Russ, the one and only Winehiker, is this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday host. For the 50th edition, he asked that we talk about a wine we’d like to take with us to enjoy in nature, whether in the context of a picnic, hike or otherwise. Given that it’s October, we would have thought that we’d be leaning red by now. You know, like a meaty Cotes du Rhone or a Zin. However, fall weather seems to be staying away from Los Angeles, and our minds remain in summer mode.

First, we should mention that we’re more picnickers than hikers, so we’ve chosen a decidedly picnicky wine in the 2007 Elio Perrone Bigaro (about $18). This is an intriguing Moscato/Brachetto blend that we discovered recently at Osteria Mozza in LA. It’s a beautiful pale pink color, with a small degree of opacity. It’s chock full of Moscato apple and pear, and Brachetto strawberry — a veritable picnic in a bottle on its own — and has incredibly fine bubbles that create a lusciously smooth texture.

Chill this down and pair it with a couple of cheeses (a Parmesan-Reggiano and a mild creamy blue, perhaps), a good friend, and a chunk of sandy Beach (we’re thinking Malibu) and you have the makings of a great day.