Which Wines to Pair With Decorating? You Choose!
I’m a little crazy about Christmas. My husband and I absolutely love the holidays and we decorate our house from top to bottom. We love to relish in the festivities of December and the holiday season, and with everything going on this year we’re determined to make our house provide us with lots of joy!
After bringing up all of the boxes of decorations, we pick out a gem of a wine (or two!) to enjoy while beginning the long (but fun!) process of turning our Florida home into a winter wonderland.
This year we started with my favorite beverage in the world: Champagne!
I opened a bottle of the Baron-Fuenté Grande Réserve Brut. This non-vintage sparkler is light gold in color and has wonderful richness with some brioche yeastiness, meyer lemon, red apple, peach and a lovely nuttiness. I’m a lover of Pinot Meunier (one of the three Champagne varietals), which provides great fruit characters. I really dig this wine and at about $35 retail, this is a great bang for your buck! Great Champagne at this price point makes me very happy!!!
While we were sipping Champagne, I was decanting a bottle of 2013 Gramercy Cellars Syrah “Lagniappe” from the Columbia Valley region of Washington state. Gramercy Cellars produces some of my favorite wines of Washington. After decanting for about two hours, we were ready to pour. On the nose are dark fruit, violet and pepper. The palate??? OLIVES!!!!!!!!!!! Oh, how I love the olive flavors I get on good Syrah! Along with the olives are some smoked meat, black pepper, baking spices, black cherry and blackberry. There is definitely a lot going on in this wine. No wonder I love Gramercy so much!
The Baron-Fuenté Grande Réserve Brut and 2013 Gramercy Cellars Syrah “Lagniappe” were a great way to START our holidays! I’m looking forward to what the rest of the season has in store for us!
