Grapevine blowout

I haven’t had a chance to get down to Grapevine Market in the last week or so (link is in the side bar) but it turns out this was some kind of birthday week for them. There were apparently events all week. Today they had live music, various food tastings and of course, some wine tastings.

Grapevine Market’s web site is generally pretty poor. Ok, it sucks. If you’re going to have events all week, don’t you think you’d make a note of it on your web site? As far as I can tell, nothing. Even their online newsletter is from last August. Pretty lame. But, it’s otherwise a pretty good store. In fact, a great store. Just wish in this modern age they’d do a better job of connecting with their clientele.

Ordinarily, they’ll have maybe 2 or 3 wines to try on a Saturday afternoon. Today, they were tasting 12. As usual, most were pretty reasonably priced. The priciest at $21.49 was Chateau Souverain 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon. It was very good, but I was in the mood to find a better value.

There were two others that I thought were very good too. The Carmenet Sauvignon Blanc for $6.99 was a great buy. Easy drinking, great summer quaffing. The other white that was good was the Chateau St. Jean Fume Blanc at $12.29. Sorry, didn’t make a note of the vintage for either of these.

There were several hot things to try as well. One of which was something called “Lava” sauce. Check out the web site. Not exactly a wine-friendly sauce, but put in the right dip, it worked out pretty well. Made from habañero, even the “mild” version of the sauce was pretty hot. The “hot” version wasn’t really that much hotter than the “mild”. So if you want spice, just go with the “hot” and be done with it.