my halloween haul

[newsguy]

driving home from work halloween night, i got the feeling that i was due for a "Drewski." that's what i call it when you stop at an out of the way wine store and find some good older wine at a bargain price.

so, i stopped at a shop i hadn't been to for months -- and wasn't disappointed.

my haul: 6 bottles of gallo sonoma county (2 each of '95 cab and zin, plus a '96 cab and a '97 zin), and a bottle of '96 sebastiani sonoma cask cab. total cost: $80 plus change.

popped a bottle of the '95 zin with a loaded homemade pizza on sunday night. color was brownish red (that's right, brownish). strong nose and fairly full flavors of raspberry jam, zinberry spice and a bit of cherry. good finish. my wife really liked the wine. i enjoyed it, but prefer more spice/pepper and less jam in my zins. also got the feeling that this wine was on the downhill slide, that it probably peaked about a year ago (this is just an impression on my part; i'm still pretty new to all this). wine was a little softer than you'd expect, with flavors sort of running together. i guess the problem with finding old dusty bottles in the wine store is provenance is a roll of the dice.

i look forward to the rest of this stash. i had a bottle of the 95 GSC cab earlier this year and LOVED it.

all in all, i'd say my halloween was all treats and no tricks.

[This message has been edited by newsguy (edited 11-15-2001).]

[mrdutton]

Sounds like you did a good job of filling up your goody bag!

[winoweenie]

News-Hound sniffs out some more bargains. When ole' man Brown comes around, it's normally eviction time. You're dead on when it comes to most stores.....it's a crap-shoot. WW