Columbus Foodie

I’ll be the first to admit. I’m not much of a wine drinker. My palate interpets pretty much all the wine I taste into one category - blech. You know how they say that some people think that cilantro tastes like soap? To me, pretty much all wine tastes like vinegar.

I get that there are differences between types of wine. I can detect the differences easily with things like olive oil. Is it that I just haven’t given wine enough of a chance? I’m a wine plebe. When it comes to wine, I think Manischewitz is palatable. I guess you could say that I like my wine sweet. But even Manischewitz is a stretch for me.

So when I saw that this edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday was all about ice wine, I thought, now HERE’s my one and only chance to participate! Ice wine! I can *do* ice wine!

For those of you who are not familiar with ice wine, according to Wikipedia, it’s a “dessert wine produced from grapes that have been frozen. The sugars and other dissolved solids do not freeze, but the water does, so the result is a concentrated, often very sweet wine.” Dessert? Sweet? Oh boy, I’m so there!

We were having steak for dinner that night, and since my previous experiences with icewine had been a sip of a white icewine, we decided to go with an icebox zinfandel.

This bottle of 2003 Frozin ($24.95 for a 375ml bottle at The Anderson’s), out of Meeker Vineyards in Sonoma County, California, was absolutely fantastic. It is the only wine in my life that I have ever wanted to drink more than a sip of. I’m going to attempt to describe what I thought of it, so bear with me if the jargon is off - I’m a wine newbie so I’m not really sure if I’m describing it correctly.

I’ll start by giving you Wine Library’s definition - “sweet, zippy, spicy red zinfandel, made in a faux-ice wine style. Sweet cherry, strawberry and raspberry have a dominant flavor, with white pepper and fresh acidity on the finish. Perfect with chocolate!”

I’ll agree with most of that. I found it to be rather full-bodied, with a berry undertone - not dry at all, but not overly lush either. It’s nose was very floral and fruity - the best way I can describe the taste is that it had almost a raisiny flavor, or kind of like what a really good sweet syrupy balsamic vinegar would taste like. I never got to try it with chocolate. We finished the bottle together in one sitting, which is a feat in and of itself considering that neither myself or my husband has ever done that before.

All in all, this is on the VERY short list of wines I’d drink happily. At about $12 per glass, it wasn’t cheap - but it was well worth every penny.

I’m not much of a drinker, so this is my first time participating in the Mixology Monday event. This edition, Mixology Monday #8: Exotic Drinks is being hosted by Meeta over at What’s For Lunch Honey? , so stop by early next week for the roundup.

The theme this month is exotic cocktails. Heck, to me pretty much anything is exotic. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not adventurous in my drinking. So I’ve decided to highlight one of my husband’s favorites.

The caipirinha is probably the only good thing that came out of our awful trip to the churrascaria at the now-defunct Spain Restaurant. It’s a traditional Brazilian drink, made with a muddled mix of limes, Chacaca, and superfine sugar. My husband said it’s citrusy kick is an invigorating delivery system for the slow burn of the Chacaca. Chacaca (Brazilian rum) is fairly hard to find in Columbus, but we managed to find it at the state liquor store that’s in the same strip mall as Anna’s Restaurant on Sawmill Rd. up in Dublin.

It’s very simple to make, if you have the right equipment, especially a muddler (the green topped object in my picture). And lucky for us, someone’s already made a printable step-by-step PDF so you can make your own. Bottoms up!