I believe I’ve talked before that I love dry rose’ wines! I drink them year-round and love them as a wine or as a sparkling wine!

With the warmer weather in my home state the past week, I’ve been throwing out the long tights and boots for short Spanx and my peeptoes!  Out goes the cube steak and mashed potato comfort food and in comes the grilled steak and asparagus.  And out goes my Cabernets and Zinfandels and in with some great summer wines!

A few years ago I had the chance to visit V. Sattui Winery in Napa Valley.  I was with The Farmer and some good friends.  The Farmer loves wine as well and we had a blast at this winery. I was meeting with the President of V. Sattui to give them a trophy they had won in the INDY International Wine Competition, a competition we run at Purdue University, and one of the largest wine competitions in the country. V. Sattui had won our Winery of the Year trophy and I had it packed in a box to give them!

After making a presentation of the trophy to the entire winery and the guests, we got a tour of the facility, let by Tom Davies, winery president. For this gentleman to take time out of his very busy schedule and give us a tour was incredible! We were given special treatment.  My thanks to them was in the amount of The Farmer’s money I spent at the winery and the continued amount of wine I continue to buy!

This Dry Rosato is one of my favorite wines.  The wine is a blend of Grenache, Syrah, and Carignane and made in the style of rose’ wines in Provence.  When I smelled and tasted this wine noticed cherry, raspberry and strawberry flavors.  It is exceptional!

And it’s not cheap, although not expensive either.  At $21.75 a bottle, you can enjoy this bottle by yourself, as I did, or share with friends.  I hate sharing this wine!  And if I’m not careful, I can drink this bottle by myself in one night!  

If you get a chance to visit V. Sattui, I highly recommend you try this wine! Plan to spend the afternoon there.  When we visited, we were able to purchase lunch at the winery and sit on their lawn while listening to music. It was a lovely day I’m able to relive when enjoying this wine.

I’m often asked if I only drink Indiana wine.  Since I promote Indiana’s wine industry, I think it’s a a valid question. And the answer is “no”, I don’t just drink Indiana wines. Although I do love what my home state produces!!

Recently Holman Ranch provided me some wines for review. Periodically over the next few months I will review each bottle and tell you about the winery.  This is a winery I was not familiar with prior to receiving the wines. But I am blown away by the beauty of their Carmel Valley, California location! One look at their website and you will see beautiful vineyards, wedding facilities and even olive groves. I’m going to have to order some olive oil!

The first wine I want to review is their 2010 estate grown Chardonnay.  Everyone who reads this blog knows I love Chardonnay.  Some wine snobs roll their eyes are Chardonnay.  Saying it’s a basic wine, the wine only newbies drink, and so on.  I say bologna to all of that! Chardonnay can be a great wine, if made well.  And this one seems to fit that description.

I was very impressed with the information Holman Ranch.  Their media kit was well done.

Each wine had a nice piece of information about the wine, winery and vineyard.

But on to the wine.  Holman Ranch has 19 acres of vineyards, just under 2 acres are dedicate to Chardonnay grapes. The vineyards were planted in 2008.

The wine is a straw yellow in the glass.  When I smelled and tasted the wine I did get a hint of toasted oak, but no overwhelming. Many people who don’t like Chardonnay say it’s because winemakers turned their Chards into butter, oaken, heavy wines.  This wine is not like that. It has just enough oak to give it a toasted nose, but not so much that you feel like you are drinking wood chips!

The wine is quite acidic.  Acidity in wine is what makes your mouth water. The minute I tasted this I felt my mouth start to water! Wine acidity is great, if it’s balanced. I thought this was well-balanced and enjoyed my glass very much!

This wine is full of citrus and honey flavors. And at $28/bottle I think it would be a great wine to enjoy with friends and a good meal!

Holman Ranch provided me this bottle of wine for review.  Although my love of wine and my opinions are my own.  No one can pay me to like their wine!  

The Farmer and I recently had the chance to visit Panama.  Not the beach or Florida city.  But the country! And what a beautiful land Panama is.

I may be swayed, but I didn’t have any bad wine while on this trip. Although, I was right next to the ocean and in vacation mode. So maybe it all just tasted good to me!

We were able to have dinner at a very nice restaurant in our hotel the last night of our trip. The wines served in this restaurant were different than they were serving in the bars.  I love Sauvignon Blanc and quickly decided to try the Santa Helena Sauvignon Blanc.  

This wine was produced in the Central Valley of Chile.  Having just visited Chile last March, I was excited to see another wine from this region. The region makes some fantastic wines and nearly every winery I visited while in Chile was outstanding.

The wine was served much too cold.  I’m not sure if you can tell, but I can almost see how cold the glass is when I look at this picture!  White wine should be served much closer to room temperature than it normally is.  My rule of thumb is white wine goes in the fridge 20 minutes before you want to serve it.  This was living in a very cold refrigerator!

The wine was pale in color.  The taste had a bit of straw and green grass, which is common in Sauvignon Blanc’s.  I also noticed some gooseberry, albeit a bit unripe.  It was a fine wine for the resort.  We were staying in an all-inclusive, so I have no idea how much this wine really cost.  

While the wine isn’t probably something I would buy, I did enjoy it at the moment.  We were dining with great friends, laughing and enjoy a lovely meal.  In the end, that’s how I think wine should be enjoyed!