Cupcake Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc 2012

I had a zen moment while cooking recently.  If you know me, you know that this is unusual.  Even if you don't know me, you can probably infer as much from the numerous references to frozen pizza, bagged salad, and cheez-its in my previous posts.

It's Not The Years, It's the Miles.

There were a few reasons for this blissed-out time.  First of all, the weather has been warming up, so I was enjoying a sunny afternoon with the windows open.  There was a nice breeze coming in as I sipped my wine and listened to one of my favorite cds, "It's Not the Years, It's the Miles," by my favorite song-goddess, Debbie Davis.  Let me tell you about the music--if you are remotely tense, blue, or tetchy, this New Orleans gal will cheer you up and mellow you out.  It's the perfect end-of-day, cooking-with-a-glass-of-wine album.

(Full disclosure:  Debbie is one of my oldest friends, but you still have to trust me on this.  We go way back; she beat me out for the good roles in the school musicals.  I should hate her, or be sickly envious of her talent, but I can't help it.  Girlfriend has a damn sexy voice.)

So...good weather and good music.  Now onto the wine.

Taken close-up so you can't tell I started drinking.

Cupcake Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc is this very clean, citrusy wine that's just lovely on a warm day.  As I sipped it, I though of margaritas and key lime pie, but without the tequila and sugar.  Turns out, I wasn't off base here.  The label reads, "The aromas are integrated, delighting the senses with flavors of Meyer lemons, Key limes and a finish that awakens the appetite."  I was indeed delighted.

Really.  I bought the bottle with the expectation of writing a snarky little passage about the screw-cap that's been embraced by New Zealand and the name "Cupcake," which I found cutesy and obvious.

But you know what?  I didn't care about any of that.  The wine was so tasty, the music so fine, and the afternoon so lovely that I didn't care about being witty or sarcastic.  I didn't even care that I was cooking.  I was just enjoying myself.

I encourage you to take the Cupcake-and-Debbie Davis Challenge, and see if it doesn't put you in a better frame of mind.  No cooking required.

Put a Cork in It.

So...what to do with all these corks?  It seems wasteful to throw them out.  As much as I love wine, I don't decorate with grapes and I'm not that into crafts, so I'm not making one of those cork wreaths.  (I think I've pinned exactly two things on Pinterest and I can't remember how to get into my account, anyway.)  Years ago, we made trivets and napkin rings as gifts for family during what has come to be known as the "Glue-Gun Christmas."  That put a slight dent in the collection, but they keep piling up.

Oh, we have a helluva lot more than this.

How about a wine cork diorama?  It's a shame that teachers and administrators would probably frown upon the use of corks in a school project, as I'm sure we could build a model of the Titanic out of them.  And since it'd be made out of corks, it would probably stay afloat a whole lot better than the real one!  But sending your kid to school with a cork model of a doomed ship is like calling CPS on yourself.

One thing we like to do is commemorate certain events by writing on the cork.  My favorite is a cork marked "Jamie!" to honor the birth of our younger son.  Yes, my husband sneaked a bottle of wine into the hospital.  (Applewood Winery's Cabernet Franc--a little above the $10 mark, but totally worth it, and besides, I'd just had a baby, for Pete's sake!)  It's a very special cork, and it's around here somewhere.

Marking the cork doesn't require major life event, either.  It can be an anniversary, a fun dinner with friends, or just "Tuesday."  Our friends marked a cork to celebrate getting their buddy drunk after he was laid off from work.  Cheers, you poor bastard!

Those same friends later had a tree fall on their house, which punched a hole in their roof.  We sent them a bottle of wine to cheer them up.  I'm pretty sure they saved the cork.

Los Vascos Cabernet Sauvignon 2011

The hardest part about this post is finding a corner of my house clean enough to take a picture.  The easiest part is drinking this wine.  After the day I've had, it's going down like mother's milk.

Chileax with the Basques.

It's the first day of spring break, and my kids are coming down from an Easter candy sugar rush.  It rained today and the younger one spent most of his time running around naked, except for a pair of bunny ears.  I really, really, really appreciated this bottle of wine.

This wine is from Chile, and the front label is in French and Spanish.  I'm not sure why.  (It's probably explained on the back label, but I started drinking before reading, so there goes that.)  Los Vascos means Basques, which refers to "an ethnic group which primarily inhabits an area traditionally known as the Basque country, a region that. . . . straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France."    Thank you, Wikipedia!  Glad I looked it up, too.  I thought Los Vascos meant cows, because, well, I don't speak Spanish.  Anyhoo, that clears up the whole French-Spanish thing.

I generally find that Chilean wines are a bit much, but this is gooood stuff.  Fruity, mild, with a wee bit o' spice at the end.  It's purty, too, with a nice ruby red color.  And guess what?  It's really, really tasty!  So tasty that I didn't mind that while I was in the middle of researching the Basques, the toilet in our master bathroom overflowed, causing it to rain in the basement.  So tasty that I didn't mind that I was standing in a small lake in the basement in my pink crocs, stabbing holes in the insulation with a steak knife so that the water would pour out and hopefully not create a death-mold situation.  So tasty that I didn't mind that in the midst of our shop-vaccing and mopping, our son was honking away on his saxophone and demanding compliments.

I didn't mind because I knew there was half a glass of Los Vascos Cab waiting for me.  It's that tasty.

That's all I got.  Drink up, y'all.