6th Street

Smoking Loon is also good

as a young lawyer i went through a real wine phase. Went to tons of wine tastings, read about it, studied it. Started buying by the case. One day i was sitting at my house alone, eating a steak i had cooked (really good steak) and so i opened a bottle of a very nice Cabernet that i had bought by the case back then. (maybe $12 a bottle but this was about 1983). After a glass of it i realized that i really did prefer ice tea to the expensive wines. from then on going out to eat got a Lot cheaper.tha

that said, there is one wine i LOVE with things like bbq, burgers, mexican food. You wont like it much with a great steak or something like that. It is Llano Sweet Red. Yea and it is sweet, not like a dessert wine, but clearly a casual wine not a more serious one. A lot of folks that don't really like the more dry reds will like this

i gave up trying to be fancy abt wines along time ago. Not Anti good wines, just not much of a sophisticated palate

Hornet where do you live? If around Austin I can recommend some vineyards to check out.

The first one I'd recommend is Westcave Cellars. It's about 20 miles outside Lakeway. It's a small vineyard that's just been open for a couple of years. Very relaxed and good people. A husband and wife team own it and I really like all of their wines.

Thanks Coach! Will definitely check into all that.

Not sure if you can find them in your area but there's a couple vineyards that put out a realllly tasty Penot Noir. If you can find them, i highly recommend Little Black Dress Vineyards and Toad Hollow Vineyards. Both put out great wines and their Pinot Noir is verrrrry good and reasonably priced.

Going to Sonoma in September for a wedding. Will definitely be sampling

I don't think Texas Cabs and Merlots are really worth spending money on, as you can find far superior offerings for the same price elsewhere. The climate and soil in Texas doesn't work well with many grapes, especially ones from more temperate climates (French varietals, etc.).

However, I do enjoy Texan wine using grapes that thrive in warmer climates like Tempranillo, Lenoir, Malbec, Shiraz, Sangiovese, etc.

By far my favorite Texas wines are Lenoir and Lenoir/Shiraz blends to cut back on some of the tartness from the Lenoir flavor. Chisholm Trail Winery up by Fredericksburg makes some great examples of these with their Lone Wolf and Diablo (Shiraz/Lenoir blend).

I really prefer Bordeaux wine, especially from the Northern regions like Medoc, Haut-Medoc, Pauillac, etc. Some outstanding bottles can be had in the $20-$40 range. Washington's Kamiaks are also some great Bordeaux style wines. That state in general puts out wine with great bang for the buck.

I am partial to the Bota Box.

The first glass is ok, but the fourth glass is excellent.

(actually, for an inexpensive table wine, it is pretty damn good and it ends up costing 4 bucks a bottle).

Was drinking some dessert wine at dinner tonight that got me feeling nice. It's the only wine I have ever liked.

What I had:

INNISKILLIN
Vidal Pearl Icewine Niagara Peninsula Canada, 2007/08
Karl Kaiser, the studious, Austrian-born chemist, and Donald Ziraldo, the Italian-Canadian agriculturalist teamed up to become the founding fathers of Canadian wine. And in that climate, it was only natural that they would try their hands at creating icewine. The fruit hangs on the vines until winter and freezes. The frozen berries are crushed, yielding a syrupy juice. This concentrated, super sweet syrup gets fermented, and the result shines with flavors of nectarine, papaya, lychee, tangerine and orange blossoms as delicious and rich as the desserts they complement so well.

Cool. An E.R. buddy of mine turned me on to it. He has bought some property outside of Taos where he plans on producing some.