What I Drank With Dinner (WIDWD)

Last Saturday night, we were entertaining my brother-in-law, Kris, who was visiting from London. Kari cooked up a big batch of pasta all’ amatriciana (tomato-based sauce with pancetta) along with a leaf lettuce salad in an olive oil and wine vinegar dressing. To accompany the meal, we served a bottle of wine that Kris's mother had brought us a while back, a Cooper Mountain 2003 Estate Pinot Noir. It offered a pleasant surprise for Kris to learn that the wine in his glass was a gift from his mother.

The Cooper Mountain pinot noir (12.5% alcohol) had a nice bouquet and bright fruit on the palate. It was an elegant pinot, with subtle flavors that revealed themselves slowly throughout the meal. Cooper Mountain vineyard is certified both biodynamic and organic. It is probably the first wine I have seen that listed the ingredients on the back label: organic grapes, sulfites. One must assume that natural yeast was used, otherwise this would be listed in the ingredients.

It was fun to be celebrating a meal with Kris while serving a bottle of wine his mother brought to us a couple of years back. In fact, we ended up calling Kris's mother in Arkansas during our dinner to thank her for the bottle. She was happy we called, although she had a hard time recalling the wine she had given us. Regardless, it offered Kris and his mom a nice opportunity to catch up while he was visiting the States.

This is what I enjoy about a bottle of wine that was received as a gift. It provides a fun way to not only reconnect to one another, but to also recall the circumstances surrounding their last visit. Unless an occasion calls for opening a wine gift immediately, I like to hold the bottle back for another time. A time when the person giving us the wine can return to our home and celebrate a meal at our table with the bottle they brought on a previous visit. Or in this case, a relative of the person.