Just got back from a great Christmas party at a friend of mines from wine class. The food was great after he had been cooking and baking off and on for like the last week. There was shrimp, baked salmon cakes with a dill sauce, cheese, bread, chips and dip, Finnish meatballs (similar to Swedish meatball but they have cheese in them), and enough cookies and desserts for a small army. I like the ginger cookies and always have.
Now we can get into some of the great wine that I remember having. We started the evening off with a 3 liter of Malbec and I do not remeber the vintage or country, it was really nice and drinkable. Next I went to the 2005 Turley Dogtown Zinfandel, which was really good, just as most Turleys are. The Turleys can come from a great number of indiviual wineries or plots of land in Napa valley. The next wine I had was the 2005 von Strasser Cabernet Franc really nice wine that tasted wonderful. After that I went to the 2005 von Strasser Cabernet Sauvignon which was just as good as the Cabernet Franc. We never got the 2005 von Strasser Monhoff Vineyard Zinfandel a lot of people had drank other wines in the main room. I was pacing myslef for the evening.
I then took a short break and had a bit of water to help hydrate and had a few desserts. After a lot of people left someone put a set of reindeer antlers with a bell on the hosts head. He made some smart comment about is was to bad no one had a camera to take his picture. That was not to say to a person like myself who happened to have his small digital camera in his pocket. Which I queitly turned on my camera in my pocket and then took his picture. Then a bit later they thought the antlers would look good on me so there they went on my bald head. I ended up taking a self portrait to make life easier. After looking at the photo a few people said it made my eye brows stand out. At some point someone else ended up with one clip on earing that had Christmas bells on there ear. I will be nice and not post that picture and it was not even of me.
After the majority of the people left the host and one other person went looking for one last wine. They pulled things out ofhis wine cellar and then put them back mostly because a lot of them I believe they said were still to young. They picked a syrah or a petit syrah (?). They tooked out a zinfandel that I did not know. They then pulled out an 2002 A Rafanelli Zinfandel (Dry Creek Valley), which I informed them was probably my third favorite zinfandel producers in the whole world. My other two favorite zinfandel producers would be Rusden Winery (Barossa) and Turley Wine Cellars, with A. Rafanelli winery a very close third. After that statement it became one of our final chooses. After talking to a few of the real wine people left we ended up witht 2002 A. Rafanelli. Great wine to end the evening on, while watching the host load the dishwasher, since he wanted no help. Once he got to the wine glasses the final two people myslef included helped dry and put the glasses away.
If I have missed anything or have something wrong, please a comment and I will update this post with more facts or things I missed.