Culinary coma....

Tonight we celebrated my father-in-law's birthday and now I'm in a culinary coma. I'll take you through what we ate and drank. It was outstanding!

We had three wines that we paired tonight. A Stonestreet Chardonnay, a Limerick Lane Old Vine Zin and a VJB Barbara Port. All three were very tasty.

First, we started with our cooking wine....that is, wine to drink while we're cooking - the Stonestreet Chardonnay.

We also had some Vella Dry Jack to pair with it. Yummy!

Next, we moved onto the main course: Pork tenderloin cooked in Merlot with shallots and garlic, string beans with almonds and Yukon Gold mashed potatoes. We also had some homemade French bread.

This paired perfectly with the 2005 Limerick Lane Old Vine Zinfandel. The vines (and winery) are in Eastern Russian River Valley and are dry farmed.

Dry farmed means they use no irrigation at all. This can be quite difficult, especially in years of drought and very hot summers. But in the best years the grapes can be outstanding, like this one.

The final course was dessert, of course. My wife made this amazing triple chocolate tart with Bailey's Irish Cream sauce. For this, we pulled out the 2005 VJB Barbara Port. Port and chocolate are one of life's little pleasures that you need to experience. Really.

















I'm now going to retire for the evening and let the coma fully kick in. Until next time.....Cheers!