Saturday Night – Marka Stewart - Part 1

It was a cool New England day (in Southern Ontario), the sun was shining yet a crisp and cool north wind was blowing. The leaves on the trees were changing to vibrate yellows, oranges and reds. The table was immaculately set for four and I was attending to last minute details of dinner and I could almost hear Martha Steward in the background as I was chopping the chives to garnish the carrot soup saying “It’s a good thing”.

"At least it looks good!"

Mick and Amy were over for our should be usual but due to scheduling conflicts is now unusual Saturday dinner. It has been awhile since the four of us have gotten together and it was good to be back in saddle/kitchen again.

I picked a couple of old favourites for the courses but paired them with wines I hadn’t tried before.

The first course was carrot soup with fire roasted chilies which is a huge favourite of both Amy and my wife. Carrot soup means one thing – Zinfandel. I grabbed a bottle of Scott Harvey Zinfandel off the rack to accompany the soup.

"Nice nose... sorry about the rest of the wine"

I’d picked this up about a month ago. It was $23 and it was a California Zinfandel from a winery that I’d never heard of before.

The nose on the wine was very aromatic, my nose was a good foot and half away from the bottle and I could pick up raspberry, pepper and coffee from it. Unfortunately the taste was no where near as nice as the nose as it had a thin mouth feel with a sharp finish with predominate flavours of sour cherry and pepper. The wine was an OK match with the soup at best.

Here is the group rating for the wine -Mick - 83, Mark - 85, Kathy – 86 , Amy – 84, Overall – 84.5

Here is the LCBO Information on the wine –

Scott Harvey Mountain Selection Zinfandel 2006

Vintages 118752
750 mL bottle
Price: $ 22.95
Wine, Red Wine,
14.5% Alcohol/Vol.
Sugar Content : D
Made in: California/Californie, United States
By: Creative Wine Concepts
Release Date: Jun 20, 2009

Tasting Note - Deep ruby color. Salty roasted nuts, pepper, and blackberry aromas follow through on a supple entry to a dryish medium body with tangy fruity, vanilla bean notes and fine powdery fruit tannins. A nicely structured, claret styled zin for the table. Score - 90. (Tasting panel, www.tastings.com, Feb. 2, 2009)

The other disappointment for the night was the soup. This is going to sound odd describing a carrot soup but the carrot flavour was too strong. Usually this soup with the green chilies and onions in it has got a wide range of flavour but for some reason all this soup had was a super strong carrot flavour. I went over every ingredient in my head and the only thing that made sense is the carrot looked a little past their prime.

Thankfully the next course was better.

Click here for Part 2