Wannabe Wino

Not that I'm trying to continue along the WBW #28 theme or anything, but we had another bottle of sparkling wine tonight. One we've been saving since we bought it for a special occassion. Tonight was that occassion. We are heading out of town for Christmas to my father in-law's family out in Oklahoma as it is his mother's 90th birthday on Christmas Eve. The thought of dragging our presents to each other out to OK and then back to VA seemed a touch ridiculous, so instead we decided that today was Christmas in our house.

We got up early, opened presents, had fancy hot cocoa, lounged in our pjs and had a ham for Christmas dinner. Not to mention some fancy homemade chocolate mousse with raspberry sauce for dessert. With our meal, we opened a bottle of Roederer Estate 1999 L'Ermitage Brut. What a fabulous sparkling wine. I never want to drink anything else again. (Well, not really, but I'm pretty darn pleased with this bottle!)

At 12% alcohol by volume, it's pretty hefty compared to other sparkling wines we've had recently! We picked this bottle up when we went to Roederer Estates on our way to Mendocino this summer. (Along with several special release bottles of Roederer Pinot Noir!) I think it cost us around $40.

As for the wine....perfect little bubbles that kept coming through each glass poured. The scent of flowers and honey on the nose. In the mouth, lots of little bubbles, crisp, tart apple, a touch of honey. The wine is creamy and perfect. I would rate this a Special sparkler in keeping with the WBW theme from this month. This would be something I would save for special occasssions (like tonight, our first Christmas as boring old marrieds :) ) or serve to those who would really appreciate it. We have one more bottle. I'd say we would drink it on our anniversary, but we already have a bottle set aside for that, that our kind server at the Lion's Den Bistro in Hopland gave us when we announced it was our favorite bottle of the evening after tasting several courses and many glasses of wine.