Michigan Wines

Man, it's been awhile since my last post. To all of my loyal readers...oh, wait a minute... As far as I can tell, absolutely no one reads this thing. If by chance, someone actually reads this as you're stumbling wildly through cyberspace, take a brief moment of your time and send me a comment about one of the posts. Is the information amusing, interesting, helpful, boring, absolutely of no interest? I think you know which side of the spectrum I'd prefer to be on...

In the meantime, I'll continue to talk to myself.

Anyway, I recently hosted a dessert wine tasting party. To get the taste buds prepped and lubricated, I popped open a couple of rieslings--Bonny Doon's Pacific Rim Dry Riesling and Leelanau Cellars 2004 Reserve Late Harvest Johannisburg Riesling to give a dry and sweet contrast. Surprisingly, not a lot of people chose the Late Harvest, so I had plenty of opportunity to taste it the following day.

11% alcohol, RS 4.2%. This wine was cool fermented at 55 °C and then backsweetened with reserved clarified grape juice. A lovely, golden yellow color. The nose bursts with honey, rose, pineapple, melon, and pear aromas. Very silken taste with a clean, lightly sweet finish. Not overly strongly sweet. Light floral and citrus flavors that linger in the middle of the palate.

I was pleasantly surprised--I'm not a huge fan of sweet wines, but this was very pleasant. I enjoyed it over a couple of evenings (a vinuvac is the greatest invention in wine). It was excellently paired with an apple fragipane tart that I had made for the party. I was given this wine as a gift, but the website for Leelanau Cellars lists it as $11.00/bottle.

Regards,
a Wine Student

p.s. I had a good laugh at myself over the apple fragipane tart. I made a Cooking Light version that called for 12 oz of 1/3 less fat cream cheese. I intended to double the recipe, so I bought 3 8 oz packages of cream cheese. I ended up with 4 oz from another recipe and found 4 oz in the freezer that my wife had left over. After throwing those both into the mixer, I added the remaining ingredients. It wasn't until the next day that I realized that I had made a Cooking Lighter version! Had completely forgotten to add the other 16 oz of cream cheese! The filling was a little flat--didn't fluff up as much as I expected. But it still tasted wonderful--got rave reviews from the party attenders!

My heart clenches a little when I think that the original recipe would have called for 3/4 of a lb of butter for the filling, not to mention the additional butter between the phyllo dough layers. I used canola oil cooking spray with a few swipes of melted butter for the phyllo dough to give it a little butter flavor.