Saturday night – Southwest theme night – Part1

The Nascar race in Phoenix was on last Saturday night and Mick and I wanted to watch the race, so I decided to go with a buffet menu. This way I could enjoy the race and not be stuck in the kitchen all night. We also had 3 extra guests for night - my friend John and his wife Kimmy and new baby Ethan.

"The boys at work"

Mick volunteered to make chicken quesadillas and I made nachos, steak and chimichurri toasts and a black bean and corn salad with grilled shrimp. I had in mind two bottles of wine for the evening – a 7 Deadly Zins Zinfandel from California and a Carmen Merlot from Chile.

I’ll cover the 2006 7 Deadly Zins Zinfandel first, as it was the first bottle we opened to have with the meal. I picked this wine up on our last trip down to NY state for 14.99 US (about $26 dollars CDN after duty, exchange and taxes) and was looking for an excuse to try it.

"Heavenly?"

The nose on the wine was a medley of strawberry, cocoa and pepper that you didn’t have to work to hard to find as the nose was huge. Tasting the wine, I found it to be a bit thin for a Zinfandel but there was good fruit there and surprisingly quite a bit of pepper as well. The spice in the food magnified the pepper even more and made the wine quite hot.

The wine was not listed on the LCBO’s website or on the Wine Spectator’s website.

Here is the group rating for the wine -Mick – 88, Mark – 88, Kathy – 89, Amy – 87, Overall – 88.

I would sum this wine up as good but not good enough that I rushing out to buy more.

Click here for Part2