cause i'm a fatty

Lunetta Prosecco

This is a great everyday sparkling white wine (for value and taste), -the kind you don’t hesitate to have a whole bottle of on a weeknight. It’s a pretty good bargain for grapes from Trentino, Italy and not just California. Even though I love trying a new wine every time we go to a wine shop, the clean finish and citrus zip of this Prosecco have made this our go to wine on several occasions. My ideal situation would involve this wine as a starter with some salty appetizers. This provides a lead in to a good, earnest cabernet sauvignon or a malbec. 

Turquoise Mesa Mourvèdre 2008 

This Colorado winery is located right in Broomfield, (about 15 minutes away from our place in Boulder), and located at the corner of an office park.  The owners were very nice and knowledgeable about what types of grapes grow well in Colorado, and let us try every single wine -white to red, that they offered. They had an excellent Black Muscat dessert wine made of grapes from Bookcliff vineyards, very similar in taste to Bookcliff’s Adagio. 

This Mourvèdre was my favorite out of the lot. It’s an unpretentious red that is soft, and smooth. While the wine cost $16, the $5 wine tasting fee was taken off because we purchased a wine. It’s kind of a win win for everyone involved. 

Turquiose Mesa Winery
555 Burbank St, Unit Q
Broomfield, CO 80020
303-653-3822 

Valley of the Moon 
Rosato di Sangiovese

This is a light rose wine that is crisp when cold, and slightly tart. It’s not bad for a $15 dollar wine, and you could even call it perfect on a rainy day.   

Snow Peaks Winery
292 Moraine Ave.
Estes Park, CO

Estes Park is a quaint, warm, and frontiersy town located thirty something miles from Boulder. You get a view of some lakes while being surrounded by towering mountains that feel inches away from you. Our tasting seemed unreal: for $3 we got to try 5 wines, and every single one we had was exquisite. Despite our past iffy experience with reds we tried to be unprejudiced to our tastings. From the whites we had the Chardonnay, Gerwurtztraminer, a sweet Riesling and a dry, a Cinsault Rose, and the Oso Rose. From the reds we chose Snowy Peak’s Sebastian’s Red, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Syrah (the sauvignon was a favorite for both of us). The dessert wines were out of this world with the Orange Muscat, which smelled of honeysuckle and citrus, and the Adagio, a velvety smooth Black Muscat that reminds you of roses and is excellent with dark chocolate. The one we took home? The Oso White. It has Gerwurtztraminer and Muscat, and is absolutely refreshing during good weather like this. 

Fat Bastard Cabernet Sauvignon

It has been pretty difficult to find a cabernet sauvignon under $15 that I don’t like. My palette always leans towards intense foods and flavors, so hearty cabernets always fit the bill. Fat Bastard is from the Languedoc region of France and is robust, and a little heavy on the tannins side personally. But once you swirl the glass and let the wine really breath, it softens up. A wine like this needs a food equally powerful, such as Bleu-cheese stuffed burgers. 

Frosted Marble Cake

I love making dinner for friends and family, but I equally enjoy eating something made by others. Geoff and Jessica just moved into Boulder and held a house-warming dinner, treating us to cuban sandwiches, some smoky gouda, scotch, and cans of the Sofia champagne made by Francis Coppola’s winery. The champagnes come in packs of four and include pretty pink straw. Aside from the fact that this is a great novelty item, the champagne is one of the better bubblies that I’ve tried from California.

I believe in two things: 1.) you can ever have too much food, and 2.) you shouldn’t come empty handed to a friend’s house. So we brought along a frosted marble cake that was low on prep time and delicious. I followed the directions exactly, but substituted the cocoa powder for Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Hot Cocoa. Mike thought it was going to be weird too, but it ended up giving a more subtle chocolate flavor that kept the dessert light. You can find the original here.