She says: We have a habit. It’s a benign habit, but it’s a habit. Often we will take pictures of the light in a restaurant as it shines through the wine in our glasses. Sometimes we capture candle light, sometimes it’s the light above the table. Just depends. Whoa, can you believe how adventurous we are? Ha, ha!! We’ve set a few to music, and we share them with you here. Enjoy!
SHE Says: I wonder if there is such a thing as blueberry wine.
HE Says: Yes. I’ve seen it. I’ve tasted it once or twice.
SHE Says: Maybe we should have some for Fourth of July dinner?
HE Says: No. It’s very sweet, more like an after-dinner liqueur.
SHE Says: And your point is…? We don’t have time for after-dinner wine?
SHE Adds: We do have time for after-dinner wine, but no time for blueberry wine to be shipped. Tomasello’s Blueberry Wine
SHE Says: It’s a Cornerstone 4th of July for us this year. Cornerstone Napa sent over some Stepping Stone wines that we think are PERFECT for this Fourth of July weekend feasting!
Our dinner: Fish tacos made with grilled salmon, grilled mahi-mahi and some seared ahi or ahi-ahi as he likes to say. Made up a batch of some spicy mango salsa, and will serve it with some Asian cole slaw. And in a totally different direction, slow-barbecued Memphis style baby back ribs. Mmmm! Gonna serve them with grilled asparagus, grilled corn, grilled potatoes (get the theme?) and…
HE interrupts: And She will be attempting a new creation – grilled sage leaves. Something about sage leaves, olive oil, salt, pepper, wood chips and the grill. No worries, we have a fireman in the neighborhood – we are prepared – and curious.
SHE says: You just wait….you just wait.
HE Says: Until then… we have three excellent Fourth Of July wines for you from Stepping Stone, the younger, wilder sister wine from
Cornerstone Cellars in Napa Valley.
SHE Says: They’re so cute! They look like “Three Little Maids From School”
HE Says: And we’re moving on to describe the three wines..
Stepping Stone 2010 Rocks, White Wine, Napa Valley
2010 Stepping Stone (from Cornerstone Cellars) Rocks! White Wine, Napa Valley 
HE Says: Cornerstone is onto a really rockin’ idea. They’re going to make a blended white and a blended red wine from the best varietals of the vintage. It won’t be the same proportions, or even the same grapes, year after year. This allows the winemakers lots of freedom to experiment and the ability to put out something really different and special.
For 2010, the Stepping Stone Rocks! white wine is an intriguing blend of chardonnay and muscat. I don’t think this is a combination I’ve come across before — if so, it was a long time ago. This combo really works. It has a hint of white peaches on the nose, making me think they added some viognier to it, but they didn’t. The wine has a pale color, and is soft and smooth. It has nice fruitiness, and sweet tones from the muscat grapes, but it’s not a sweet wine by any means. This wine does really rock! I gave it a 15+, which is very strong for a white.
SHE Says: Memories of Juicy Fruit gum come to mind. This one sings opera – she is a soprano.
HE and SHE both say: A Sunday brunch wine, and perfect for a salad dinner and a picnic. In fact, that’s what we expected and why we chose it for our 4th of July picnic!
Click here for more Picnic Wines from Stepping Stone at Cornerstone Cellars.
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She says: Total Wine opened a new store in Redondo Beach, CA. 
Have you heard of them yet? Take a peek. As you may have surmised from earlier posts, I’m a fan of very few big box stores. Unless they are fully staffed with knowledgeable, helpful people, I tend to get overwhelmed, lost, confused and I can feel my soul being sucked out of my body as I wind down the maze of aisles and shelves.
He Said ~ She Said Wine Blog at Total Wine store opening.
Today I have a new perspective. He and She attended the opening of Total Wine’s new store in Redondo Beach, CA. Total Wine is a right-sized wine retailer, albeit in a big box store, but the owners (brothers David Trone and Robert Trone) are so completely committed to serving their communities, making wine accessible to everyone and have done such a great job hiring knowledgeable, helpful oriented employees – you end up loving them and the store.
Total Wine has made a major commitment to training their employees to make them the most knowledgeable wine sellers in the country along with choosing just the sweetest people. Reasons I’ll be visiting the Total Wine store near me and reasons I encourage you to visit the one near you:
1) Weekly wine tastings in the store. The best way to enjoy wine is to keep tasting, keep learning and keep reading our blog! Depending on which state you live in, the tastings are free or you pay just a small donation fee. At special events you’ll be able to meet the wine-makers and the wine experts, so check it out. http://bit.ly/TotalWineTastingEvents
2) Passionate and thoroughly educated wine professionals to educate you and assist you with your purchases.
3) Opportunities for very inexpensive and more in-depth educational tastings for you and your friends in their on-site training room. In case you haven’t noticed, wine tastings have become overpriced in the last few years with events costing you upwards of $50/per person and sometimes with inexperienced people pouring wine they know nothing about. Enough of that nonsense, gather your friends and schedule some time at Total Wine. http://bit.ly/TotalWineEduation
4) Staff recommendations on specific bottles of wine are right there on the shelves while you are shopping, so if you have more questions, you can talk to the person who recommended the wine and learn more.
Last night’s ribbon cutting ceremony was humorous, quick and generous to the community with a $10,000 donation to the Redondo Beach Library Foundation (Libraries are one of my personal favorite causes) so Total Wine is busy earning extra points in my book!
The requisite BIG SCISSORS were on the scene and that’s always fun. The ribbon cutting 
ceremony was followed by an in-store tasting of Caymus wines. Nice. They brought out the big guns on the first night. Suhweet! I’ll post tasting notes in just a few days.
Proper disclosure: This is not a paid post. We were two of the first 100 people to visit, so we did receive Reidel wine tumblers as a gift like the other attendees, but as you know, we’re not the types to be swayed by gifts.
She says: 55 million cases of bottled wine sold in California each year. Holy Kaw – that’s a lot. If each case has 6 or 12 bottles – (sigh… more math) subtract the screw caps, and that’s STILL a lot of corks. What to do with them?
You know the mantra… Reduce, Re-use, Recycle.
Reduce – um… you mean, like, drink less wine? Bwa, ha, ha! You’re so funny!
How to Recycle Cork - Cornerstone Napa, Stepping Stone Corks
Re-use – A few – but where? How many cork trivets does the world need?
Re-cycle – Ok, but where? What’s a recycle-a-holic to do?
Reduce – California is not reducing the amount of wine we make or drink. There are laws about that – natural laws of happiness that require certain amounts of wine to be made and consumed each year. Yes. I swear I read that in some law book. Trust me.
Re-use – You’ll re-use a few in bottles perhaps, but here’s an awesome option: @MackenzieMays on Twitter reports that she saw kitchen backsplashes and kitchen counters made from wine corks. THAT’S COOL! She reported that they cut the corks in half (oh great – that math you did up there? x it by 2) for steadiness and then glued them onto something builders know all about. Ask your favorite builder what’s possible. (I searched for pix, etc – but came up w/nothing.)
If that’s a little too “granola girl” for you – here’s a picture of a cork TRIM that would be awesome in many kitchens, wine lairs, (you have a wine lair, don’t you?), a den or a dining room or two. And @ThisOldHouse has a great blog post from 2008 10 Uses for Wine Corks http://bit.ly/10UsesForWineCorks
Recycle - I was dorkily ecstatic when our city began pickup of our “green garbage” or grass, leaves, vegetable scraps. I could hear angels singing. I’d been evangelizing the compost religion to HE for a while and then, voila, the city got on the same bandwagon and gave us Green Barrels! Yay, California! But the green barrel picker-uppers won’t take corks. Corks take too long to break down. (Jan. 2012 update – apparently now you CAN recycle corks in green barrels! Check w/your specific city regulations.)
So check this out – ReCork.org Recyles your corks! http://bit.ly/ReCorkRecyclesYourWineCorks @RECORK on Twitter. And this company, TerraCycle, will help you recycle your cork and lots of other stuff, too – and for some of your stuff – they’ll give you cash. That’s different! http://bit.ly/TerraCycleRecyclesCorks Twitter handle is @TerraCycle
And now – @LATimesHome writer Susan Carpenter wrote out the deets on recycling wine corks, metal screw tops, plastic stoppers and all the wrappers on wine. What can be recyled? What can’t be recycled? It’s in the Sat. March 26 edition of LA Times – but I can’t find a digital version of the article anywhere. Guess you’ll have to make some trash and buy the hard copy LA Times in order to reduce the trash from wine toppers and stoppers. Tweet to @LATimesHome and maybe they’ll put Susan Carpenter’s “Pop that cork, then…” article. Sat. March 26 – Home section page E7. (update: March 31 LA Times published the article onilne: Recycling Corks – The How Where When and Why
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Jan. 2012 update: Reader submits the following how to recycle cork ~ more suggestions! http://bit.ly/How_To_Recycle_Cork
1974 Sonoma Vineyards Alexader's Crown Cabernet Sauvignon
1974 Sonoma Vineyards Alexander’s Crown Cabernet Sauvignon.
He said: My parents bought this wine in 1977, and it’s been in my father’s wine locker for almost 34 years. We decided to open up one of the bottles to see if the wine was still good.
This wine holds a very special place in California wine making history. It is the first single vineyard cabernet from Sonoma Valley. According to the back label, the Alexander’s Crown vineyard is a 61-acre vineyard located on a promontory above the Alexander Valley.
The winemaker was Rodney Strong, a major pioneer in the Sonoma winemaking world. Sonoma Vineyards later became Rodney Strong Vineyards. Rodney Strong, now owned by Tom Klein, still produces an Alexander’s Crown single vineyard cab.
You can see the first vintage of Alexander’s Crown charted on this timeline on the Rodney Strong website. http://bit.ly/AlexandersCrown
Rodney’s notes on the label and note card are very interesting. For one, he says the grapes were harvested at 24.2 brix on November 3rd, which is very late. Then he apologizes for the wine being high alcohol at 13.7%, which would be considered low nowadays. He also said the wine could age for 20 years if you had the patience. Well, we were super patient, letting it sit for 36 years!
And now for the tasting notes:
He said: I had some doubts at first when I uncorked the wine. It had a little off smell and tasted a bit acidic, but the color was fairly red and I thought it was just a bit tight. After about 10 minutes, the wine started opening up and becoming more approachable. After being open an hour, the wine really showed its stuff. It had great cherry flavors and the balance was terrific. This turned into a tremendous bottle of wine. I gave it an excellent score of 17. The bottle had a lot of sediment.
She said: I don’t know how I know this, but I would say this has structure. You were so worth the wait, you big strong man-wine.
P.S. She says: I went peeking into to Barry’s father’s wine notes to see what Mel might have had to say about Sonoma Vineyard’s Alexander’s Crown. And here’s what I found. Mel tasted and purchased the wine in August of 1977. Mel wrote: Fruity, smooth, lots of TANNIN, BEAUTIFUL
Mel kept an inventory of his wines on 3×5 cards and stored them in a little tin box. He bought two cases of ’74 Alexander’s Crown (back when cases were 12 bottles). Each bottle cost $6.50 Only two bottles were marked off as being opened. Let me see if I can do that math 24 bottles – 3 bottles minus not so perfect inventory keeping = still a whole lotta good wine left! Of course there’s no way each bottle will be perfect, but this one was and that’s a good sign. Enjoy the hand written notes!
Barry's father's handwritten notes on 1974 Sonoma Vineyards Alexander's Crown Cabernet Sauvignon
You can view additional, higher quality photos of the hang-tag, the bottle and Barry’s father’s wine notes on our Flickr page: http://bit.ly/BarrysentialsPhotos
Served with: A hearty homemade stew on a rainy and cold Saturday night.
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He and She both say – a flour made from grape skins and seeds sounds ingenious.
Props to Wine Scamp because we
listen to Good Food on KCRW a lot, but missed this wine innovation. Thank you!
http://wine-scamp.com/2011/03/14/wine-flour-wine-flour/
Technorati Tags: Wine, Flour, Innovation
SHE SAYS: Well, here they come – more Pinot wine makers than you can even imagine serving up over 400 pinot wines. I’m trying hard to imagine it, but I won’t have to imagine it on Saturday as I’ll be in the “thick” of it experiencing it. The winemakers are unveiling their 2007 vintage and it is an acclaimed vintage.
Look at some of your options!
Thrs. Jan. 13 – The Winemakers “Table Hop” dinner
Thrs. Jan. 13 – Pinot 101 – at K&L Wine Merchants in Hollywood (a free event)
Fri. Jan. 14 – “Meet the Winemakers” Night at West Restaurant at Hotel Angeleno
Sat. Jan. 15 – The Pinot Days Grand Festival Public Tasting
..and then there is grilled cheese and wine (yum), VIP Tour and lots more.
See all of your Pinot Days options here: http://bit.ly/PinotDays2011EventsList
With 125 producers of pinot noir, you’ll be able to sample up to 400 pinots (Who are we kidding? No, you won’t – I mean no one can sample that many in one day and be able to make any distinctions – but you will try as many as you can.)
From the Russian River Valley to the Santa Lucia Highlands, Oregon to Carneros, Anderson Valley to the Sonoma Coast and to the Santa Rita Hills (one of our personal favorites.) Taste the wines, talk with the wine makers and visit the specialty food purveyors who will be serving up the foods that pair well with pinot.
Leave a comment on the Barrysentials Facebook Page and get your discount code for the events! See you there! http://facebook.com/HeSaidSheSaidWineBlog
Trocadero Brut Blanc de Blanc:HE and SHE both say: Wine made in Hawaii? Yes, indeed. There are wineries in all 50 states now, including Hawaii. We were really pleasantly surprised by the quality of the wine here, and the staff was really warm and inviting. Here is our experience visiting Maui’s Tedeschi Vineyards.
Maui's Winery at Ulupalakua, aka Tedeschi Winery
The formal name is Tedeschi Vineyards, the more common name is Maui’s Winery at Ulupalakua Ranch. It is as beautiful as you would imagine, like so many things in upcountry Maui. When you get tired of the beaches and bikinis — and trust us, you will — head to upcountry on the side of Haleakala volcano and have some ranch-style fun at the Tedeschi Winery.
Originally the 20,000 acres of Ulupalakua Ranch was a sugar plantation. The last sugar crop was harvested in 1883 and the land became a cattle ranch. The 22-acre Tedeschi Vineyard (a few miles from the winery) was established in 1974 and their first grapes were harvested in 1980. Because of the warm weather, the harvest is in August and September. The first wine they released in 1977 was a pineapple wine that they still make today. Click here for a more complete history of the land.
Sally took about 20 of us on a short tour of the grounds and gave a brief description of the trees and basic biology of the land. After a quick look at the former sugar mill that is now the winery, it was on to the tasting room where Elena was a gracious host.
The tasting room is in a historic building which is called The King’s Cottage. King David Kalakaua and Queen Kapi’olani were frequent guests of the ranch owners, and so in 1874 this special cottage was built just for them. You can see pictures and read more about the cottage here.
Serve with: In general, Maui wines are perfect for almost any light seafood dinner you might serve, vegetarian dinner, or any island style meal you might have planned for summer – or even Indian Summer. They are great picnic wines as they are light and fun. During other seasons, you might find some of these fit with Asian dinners, since Asian is rather difficult to pair up with many of the heavier California wines we write about.
The Maui winery does not usually bottle by vintages which is a little different, so you won’t see vintage years beside most of these wine names. We tasted 8 wines and enjoyed a completely unique wine experience.
(1) Upcountry Gold, Chardonnay ~ French Colombard blend. (this wine is not listed on their current website. You’ll have to email them and ask when it will be available again. info AT mauiwine DOT com )
HE says: Pure straw color. Dry & crisp, but not much fruit. I gave it a 13 on my scale of 1 – 20.
SHE says: You taste so good, I hardly even notice you’re a chardonnay.
(2) Rose Ranch Cuvee – this sparkling wine is primarily made from chardonnay, with a touch of pinot noir to give it complexity and a little blush.
HE Says: This sparkler had a nice balance. Good fruit, dry. Who knew they could make a good sparkler in Hawaii? – I rate it a solid 14+.
SHE Says: You’re super-bubbly! You can stay all day!
(3) Ulupalakua Red - 40% Syrah / 60% Merlot. The grapes are brought in from California for this wine, as we recall. The blend changes depending on the grapes. The previous blend was Cab-Syrah.)
HE says: Very soft, like violet & velvet. You can really taste the merlot. It’s easy to drink, but needs more body. 13+
SHE says: You’re a little stiff for me.
HE says: Stiff? Are we drinking the same wine?
(4) Mele, 2007 Syrah ~ Estate Grown Mele is a chant or a song in Hawaiian
HE says: This full-bodied red exhibited a beguiling spicy berry and chocolate nose. It had berry flavors and was soft, with little tannin. Spice after-tones rounded out the taste. Yummy! 14+
SHE says: You’re complicated, but I like you. I don’t usually have time for complicated things, but you — I like.
(5) Hula O Maui – Sparkling wine. Made entirely from Maui Gold pineapples, grown on Maui. Pineapples grow year-round so there’s always an ongoing harvest and wine production.
HE says: Despite being made only from pineapples, the pineapple notes & flavors were very subtle. It was a clean sparkler, and would go nicely with Asian food. I can honestly say it was the best non-grape wine I’ve ever tasted. Maui champagne, gotta love it! 14+
SHE says: You’re lovely. You smell like pineapple, but you don’t taste like pineapple – just lovely and fruity are you.
Serving suggestion: A Maui wedding perhaps? Yes, this sparkling wine is perfect for a Maui wedding celebration. Click to see wedding photographer Megan Finley’s inspiration board for a Maui wedding design.
(6) Maui Blanc – from Maui grown pineapples. Non sparkling still wine.
HE says: This pineapple wine had a very floral nose. It has stronger pineapple flavors than the Hula O Maui sparkler, but not much body. 13+
SHE says: Lots of pineapple – ooo0-wee! Love ya. Aloha.
(7) Maui Splash (Pineapple + Passion Fruit and their biggest seller)
HE says: This one smells like a gardenia. Very fruity – almost like a sangria. This is really a fun & simple summer wine, great for a party or for people who like fruity wines.
SHE says: You’re so fruity! I want to invite you home to meet all my fruity friends!
(8) Framboise de Maui – Raspberry Wine (20% alcohol)
HE says: Framboizzzzz! I love saying it like a snooty Frenchman. Like most framboises (framboizzzzzzzes?), it had a really intense nose. It was very smooth & velvety. A bit too strong for me to have on it’s own, but great with ice cream or other desserts.
SHE says: A bit bitter, are we? Guess you haven’t been in Maui long enough to relax properly.
Serving suggestion: Try it with chocolate, over ice cream or maybe with some sparkling water — why not try a pinch in champagne or in the Hula O Maui sparkling wine? That would be fun.
Where do you find Maui wines? Good question. SHE bought her first bottle of Maui Splash when she was dating He and wanted to surprise him with a wine she was sure he’d never tasted before. Cost Plus World Market was where she stumbled across Maui Splash. They almost always have Maui Wines in stock. Click here for a list of where you’ll find Maui wines.
