Prim and Primal

  
looky here. she says without using caps like a proper woman who writes. 

Ok caps. Zinfandels have been a favorite of mine for a while. I like them. They have everything. Spice and fruit and leather and A Lot. They are the indecisive wine lover’s wine.

So naturally the fact that an ancestor of theirs is primitivo meant I needed primitivo.

This primitivo:

  
 The 2014 Tempo Vero Primitivo IGT

I got it on club w.

By the way if you want a free bottle of wine-any wine!-here’s my link. Clicky here:

http://www.clubw.com/eclifford

Very very smooth. Little tannins. Less spice. More berries. I picture strawberries and raspberries and a few blueberries and just maybe two blackberries.

The acidity is lilting and elegant, it’s the jaunty bridge to this wine’s ballad to berries.
I’d like to choreograph to this wine.

Book. Wine. Octopus.

   
This week you get it ALL. Wine, reading material and aquatic life.I present to you…The Tentacle.

  And! The Soul of an Octopus.  

And! Octopus:
  
Because that is how my book club rolls. I have a book club of 4. That is about the right number. So here is the story: one of the members picked The Soul of an Octopus for our next book. Before we met to discuss it he and I spotted the fine work of Eight Arms Cellars at Covell aka my second home.
The bottle could not be argued with, we needed to taste it. Being generous as they are at Covell we were poured a sample. Then we bought a bottle. Investigating the website I saw some other intriguing potions. I will write about The Argonaut on a later post but for now…The Tentacle.
At 48% Syrah, 42% Zinfandel and the rest percent (ten, I can do math) Petite Sirah, this is like my biggest wine loves with a touch of surprise. The surprise being Petite Sirah, which I normally am meh on, and have downright disliked but I think of it like this wine’s adorable tooth gap. Or cute mole. Wait, let’s not compare wine to moles.

So, tasting notes: this is berry-rich but not really sweet. In other words it is one hell of a glass of juice. Soft, soft tannins. Pleasant acid. I don’t know what else I can say besides two cheers for that malolactic fermentation? At least for this wine.

The book is likewise charming Octopuses are fascinating creatures. Did you know they taste with their skin? And they are very clever. And reading about them forced us to seek out a nearby aquarium so we could see one, the little purple guy you saw above. Now I want to meet one, seeing as this one was not particularly interactive. Time to learn to scuba. That is all.

Weekly Wine?

Okay, here’s the deal. I don’t post a lot these days. I have another weekly column that I have to tend to and then there is the thing about me being here in LA to be an actor. I’m doing a bunch of that lately so the blog gets the short shrift.

However! I’ve had a lot of wine tasting opportunity of late. So I’m gonna try to point you to a wine I’m particularly digging once a week. Okay?

I know, based on my posts of late all being booze, it probably looks like I’m on a liquid diet. What can I say? I am actress. Girl has gotta watch her figure. I jest.

Let’s talk wine. The first weekly wine is…from Martian Ranch and Vineyard! I was working as a mixologist at a farm to table dinner. My cocktail was the opener. But the wines for pairing with dinner turned my appetizer-mixed-drink eyes. I was drinking the wine (To pair with Loghan’s genius) that was paired with the amazing vegan eats of I met Nan Helgeland, whose creations I was sipping, and she is the best. It follows that her biodynamic creations follow suit.

This is the 2012 Syrah Red Shift. 95 percent syrah, 5 percent Viognier. Saucy. This wine is robust yet in a lean and enjoyable way. It is rife with dark purple fruit. Think plums, and perhaps…currant? I don’t know because I have never eaten a currant straight up. But sipping with eyes closed I am seeing currants so there ya go.

It makes me think of leather. It is muscular but not overly brawny. Manly but not macho. Drinking this wine is like sipping a man who hikes a lot but wears an expensive leather watch and who will sleep with you on deep purple velvet sheets which sounds maybe a bit hot and uncomfortable but let’s remember this is wine not real life and in my imagination it is kinda hot.

Beyond the enjoyment of wine, there is the science nerd in me that gets satisfied. As the site will tell you red shift was phenomenon that let us figure out our universe is expanding. There are little science factoids scattered throughout their web site as is apropos of a winery with an extraterrestrial nom.
Name.

I tasted a lot of Nan’s wines and I am now a fan. Or a Martian. What can we call fans of this winery? Martianados? I’m gonna stick with Martian.