Linden Vineyards

Sunday, Ann and I made our first trip post-harvest to Linden Vineyards to meet up with Karen and we had a wonderful afternoon doing a cellar tasting and then chatting until just before they closed for the day. It was just really great to get out of the house and have some adult conversation for once.

Happy Girls!

Annie surprised me by wanting to drink Petit Verdot. In the past, the tannic structure of PV has put her off. With each passing month, she comes more and more to the dark side, appreciating acid and tannins more and more. Petit Verdot is not one of my favorite standalone grapes (it's wonderful for adding color and structure to a blend), but darned if it doesn't do really well here in Virginia in the right hands.

Artsy Photo of Ann

The highlight of the cellar tasting was the 2013 Avenius Chardonnay. It is a phenomenal, taut wine with hints of underripe pineapple. I have to say that it is the best Chardonnay I have ever tasted from Linden and certainly from Shari's vineyard. The 2010 Late Harvest Vidal is absolutely nuts, being Vidal on steroids. I could only drink tiny sips of it, so intense was the experience. The 2008 is much more drinkable.

A Beautiful Mediterranean Sunday

Sunday was a fantastic day to be outside and Ann and I headed out around 11:30 to wait for Karen to arrive, talking, sipping Pinot Gris, and sitting on the patio in the shade of the pergola. Karen arrived a little while later and we spent a most enjoyable afternoon on the patio catching up, until after we ate lunch late afternoon and headed in to cool off in the air conditioning.


My Two Lovely....

....Dining Companions

Thank You Karen!

Karen brought a couple bottles of Willamette Pinot of which this Boedecker was the superior. She knows exactly what I love to drink.

Mezes: Olives, Hummus, Grape Leaves, Red Pepper Salad

Earlier in the day, I put together this platter of dolma/dolmades, red pepper salad, olives, and hummus. I make the hummus fairly loose with lots of lemon juice, olive oil, and for a special flavor, sesame oil rather than tahini. Try it some time. I took my meal cues from the beautiful breezy warm Mediterranean weather and created a meal that would be recognizable almost anywhere in the Eastern Med.

Turkish Chopped Salad

Early in the day, I chopped red peppers, cucumbers, red onions, and tomatoes. Just before dinner I dressed the salad with lots of chopped parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper.

Pork Kofta with Feta, Dill, and Mint

I had a hankering for kofta on the grill, but I didn't have any lamb I felt like grinding so I used pork (frown if you must) and seasoned it the same way with feta, dill, mint, garlic, oregano, and various spices (such as allspice, coriander, etc.).

Dinner is Served: Kofta, Salad, and Tzatziki/Cacık

And here you see our dinner, ready to eat, with the kofta, the salad, and a bowl of thick tzatziki that I made the day before. Turkish cacık is rather thinner than this in my experience: I like it thicker.

Linden Vineyards

Sunday was a pretty nice day; high 40s, mostly sunny, with a bit of a breeze. Not a bad day at all to head down to Linden to drink a bit of wine with our friend Karen. You can see from these photos that it is still late winter: nothing doing yet on the Chardonnay vines and the witch hazel wreath at the front door.


My partners in crime:


We did the obligatory tasting which was my first chance to taste the 2010 Seyval Blanc, which is a lot bigger, fatter, and more tropical than the 2009 that we're currently pouring at the restaurant. This is all due to the hot, hot 2010 summer. And it was also my first taste of the finished 2009 Claret; it seems a bit disjointed now and needs some age (which it will probably never get) to come together.

From there, we moved on to the library wine, always a highlight of our winter visits to Linden. They were pouring the 2004 Boisseau Red, a mostly Franc blend from Richard Boisseau's really warm west-facing site. It really was drinking superbly and a lot better than I imagined that hot site wine would be drinking at this point—I was really thinking it might be beyond prime, not so at all. And it has developed the most unusual cinnamon bun flavor right in the mid-palate, very cool.

After this, we had some sorely needed breakfast, whose detritus you see here, first with the 2008 Petit Verdot, which is simply wonderful with its dried blackberry leaf and big dense black fruit, and then with the 2008 Hardscrabble Red, which has more structure than the more opulent hot weather 2007.

And finally, the two of us, thanks to Karen, staring into the brutal late afternoon sun.

Feeling no pain, no pain at all!