oh, hello lovelies. i had planned to spend this post delving into more descriptions of bottles from the giant box of wine, but ended up spending my evening with 3 of my favorite ladies from my former agency life, drinking wine and dishing, instead. so i figure that is way more fun to write about than what i found in the box this week (but read on for more of that, too)!
wine and whining has long been our game. now that the 4 of us are spreading our awesome across 3 different agencies, it’s always fun to get back together for the wine . . . and honestly, these days, much less of the whining. seems like a good thing! so for this outing, we decided to grace the newly-opened Max’s Wine Dive with our presence.
totally fun concept — a wine bar that isn’t snobby. they’ve got a nice selection and even a wine tap, plus gourmet bar food type fare. several of us splurged on a $17 (yipes!) John Anthony Sauvingnon Blanc. definitely delish, but tasted kind of buttery, more like a Chardonnay. so i switched it up to the Rosé du Patron because i’m loving my pinks after that great one last week. we indulged in tubs of MAX ‘n’ Cheese (hello, truffle cream sauce and Gruyère) and Drunk Bread, which is basically a savory bread pudding of sourdough in a white wine custard (aka heaven), plus a beautiful beet salad and (of course) fries.
we’re all glad to have tried it, but it definitely had a chain feel and was trying a little too hard to be cool (read, perky servers and too-loud 80s music). after, um, several glasses, we adjourned to the Ri Ra patio (yeah, yeah, another chain, i know) across the street, which was much quieter and more our speed and finished up the evening with a Riesling (because they were out of Sauv Blanc. and yeah, i am aware you don’t go to an Irish bar for the wine.) all in all, a lovely and much-needed girly playdate (as Spy literally called it).
now for the box. after the lovely Rosé experience last week, i was a little disappointed with the Sauvingnon Blancs i tried over the next several days. and when i say disappointed, i in no way mean these wines were bad, undrinkable or just yuck. (y’all are gonna love the sophisticated wine tasting terminology i throw at these posts! ) overall, i just found that they weren’t that special.
that said, let’s back up. i tend to like super light, crisp SBs and typically prefer a South African. i’m not that familiar with Californians and assume they generally may have a slightly different style overall and are obviously made with grapes raised in different circumstances. so with that disclaimer, here’s what i tried.
Ryan O’Connell Kid & Randy Hester Rachis: the first 2 bottles were fairly flat. definitely decent (meaning good, drinkable, serve-able, etc!), but there just didn’t seem to be much complexity to them. there was no oh, yum! moment, but i did definitely enjoy both bottles down to the last drop (no, not both at one sitting).
Jarvis Tomei Semilla: the third had a bit more of the crispness that i’m used to and upon first taste, elicited an oooh! turns out it’s one of the ones Naked describes as grassy, so maybe that’s what to call the taste i like. i definitely would seek this out again.