1994 Faustino I Rioja, Tinto Gran Reserva

[TheEngineer]

Wow. Very nice. This is the second time I've tasted this and it was still showing very well.
Light amber in color with an aged rim. Good scent of blackberry, vanilla, earth, old oak, and just mellow. Puts you in the same mood almost immediately. Finished wsa very long.

Overwhelmingly a favorite of the party tonight and lost out only by the thinnest of margins to the 2000 Mission Hill Chardonnay as the favorite of the evening.

85% Tempranillo, 10% Graziano, 5% mazuelo.

Paired with a Roasted rosemary lemon cornish hen with apricot, grape reduction sauce

[This message has been edited by TheEngineer (edited 02-20-2005).]

[wondersofwine]

Care to share your Cornish hen recipe with the fruit reduction sauce? All the food sounds good but this is one I would particularly like to try out.

[TheEngineer]

Not a problem. I'll put this together (a friend cooked this one so it is her recipe, but she got a few request for this last night as well).

[wondersofwine]

Thanks.

[TheEngineer]

Roasted Rosemary Lemon Cornish Hen with Apricot Grape Reduction Sauce.

Ingredients
Sauce:
2 cups white grape juice
1/2 stick butter
1/2 lbs grapes peeled and pitted
2 table spoons natural dried apricots diced into ¼” squares
2 tablespoons of finely diced shallot
Corn starch

Roast:
3 Cornish Hens medium size
2 lemons, cut into halves
3 sticks of rosemary
2 tablespoons tawny port
Pepper and salt to taste
Olive oil
2 table spoons honey

For Cornish hen

Combine some olive oil, honey, the juice of the two lemons, port and the salt and pepper for the marinade. Add in cornish hen and marinate for 1 hour or more.
Stuff cornish hen with 1 stick of rosemary and 1/2 of lemon with juice removed.
Apply a bit more olive oil to the top of the cornish hens an place onto roaster.
Roast for 45 minutes

For Sauce
In a pan, stir fry the shallot with the butter to just heat up and then add in the peed grapes and apricot. Cook for a few minutes and then add in remainder of the sauce ingredients and bring to boil.Reduce to simmer and reduce volume by 60%. Corn starch can be added to thicken the sauce to the desired thickness.

Remove lemon peel and rosemary from the Cornish hen. Half or quarter Cornish hen and serve with some of the lemon and rosemary on the side. Sauce can go slightly on the chicken and the rest around it as people will have different tastes for the amount of sauce they like.


[This message has been edited by TheEngineer (edited 02-23-2005).]

[Kcwhippet]

This lost out to a Chard from Canada? If WW was there, he'd have definitely tipped the scales toward the red.

[TheEngineer]

I don't know....there were a couple of diehards for this wine that (myself included) were at the party. I personally still love this wine. It's one of those that when you open up and nose it, you get this stupid grin on your face because you are so happy....

Nonetheless, none of the diehards rated this wine aboue the Canadian Chardonnay. this wine came in second overall for the evening.....really close in my books but still just under.

I don't think that this was a bad bottle either. Might be worth a try for you (of the Mission Hill..but only at the Estate bottle level...their other chardonnays I remember to be much more common).

[winoweenie]

Musta been a bunch of SW lovers that packed the forum. Either that or the Reds were mainly led by Fred Franzias' lineup. WW