That bottle of wine

I bought a nice bottle of Pinot Noir the other day. It’s one of my very favorite wines and, usually, it’s something I reserve for a special dinner. However, I don’t plan on having any ‘special’ dinners in the near future. So I’ve been toying with the idea of cracking it open to enjoy in front of the fire with the TiVo remote control in my hand tonight. Dunno, though. In one sense, that seems like a waste of a fine wine. In another, why the heck not? If I enjoy it, that’s not a waste, right? Right.

For the first time in nearly forever my local wine stores now stock Pinot Noir. I don’t know why they didn’t for a space of several years, but perhaps that’s why it seems so special. I used to only find it in other far away locales. The last time I found it was last year sometime. Now my local stores carry quite a supply of it and I can easily replace it. That delights me to no end.

What I also noticed, though, is that the price of Pinot Noir has gone through the roof. Apparently, from what I’ve read, it has become the new HOT wine in California and as we on the east coast know, what starts in California, eventually makes its way here. So no wonder the stores here have decided to hop on that bandwagon and provide us with the new HOT wine.

After doing some reading, I find that I chose a pretty good bottle of 2004 Tudor Wines (Dan Tudor) “Radog” Pinot Noir. Radog is Tudor wines’ second label and the winery still has some growing to do. Compared to the Tudor label’s own superbly rated 2004 Pinot Noir (scroll 3/4 down page), Radog’s still has a pretty decent rating for flavor and subtleties and may be considered a top value Pinot Noir because it’s about half the price of the next tier of Pinot Noirs. In other words, you get a lot of bang for the buck with this one. Think maybe I’d better go back and buy some more before it’s all gone.