Birthday Wines

Saturday night we celebrated my birthday with some great wine. Nancy’s mom and a couple of our friends came over for dinner. We decided to make pulled pork for dinner. We bought a pork shoulder roast, mixed-up a dry rub and “rubbed” the roast Friday night. It sat in the refrigerator all night with the rub on it, and then I put it in the smoker Saturday morning. I kept the smoker around 250 degrees fahrenheit for 7 hours and it came out just perfect. We let it rest about 45 minutes and then shredded the pork. It had that great smokiness, tenderness and juiciness you want. Nancy made her great corn pudding and an Asian style cole slaw to accompany the pork. We served BBQ sauce and sliced some bread for those that wanted sandwiches. Oh, and then there was the birthday cake, German Chocolate per my request!

Since we were celebrating my birthday I chose the wines. We started with the 2008 Provenance Sauvignon Blanc for those that wanted white. For the red lovers, I chose a 2006 Beaulieu Vineyards Georges De Latour Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon and a 2002 Hewitt Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon. Both wines were really excellent.

The 2006 BV Private Reserve was a dark ruby color with a nose of dark ripe fruit, vegetal notes and spice. In the mouth there was a nice amount of dark fruit with a hint of vegetal, tobacco and smoke flavors. This wine was incredibly smooth, very well balanced with moderate well integrated tannins and good acid. The finish was long with the flavor of the wine.

The 2002 Hewitt Cabernet was a very dark ruby color, even darker than the BV. The nose had ripe dark fruit with a hint of green pepper. The flavor followed the nose with the addition of tobacco and smoke. Well integrated smooth tannins, more noticeable than the BV, however. Very flavorful smooth wine with a long finish.

Both of these wines were excellent but were made in a different style. The BV was silky smooth while the Hewitt had more structure.

5 Comments

  1. Pingback: 2002 Hewitt Cabernet Sauvignon |Pull That Cork

  2. Is there any of that pulled pork left? If not I want it on my birthday…..

    • There is a little left but we are eating it as fast as we can. Our house sitter even made up an excuse last night to come over for leftovers. If you want to celebrate your birthday over here we could do some more. I can run the smoker as long as it isn’t pouring rain 🙂

  3. Hey Pete, my sister gave me a bottle of J.D. Hurley 2005 Cab (Martin Ranch) that looks good enough to eat. We’ll get to it sometime soon. We had chocolate cake (from your sister’s hand) for a birthday treat too.

    Check out this interesting LA Times magazine piece on pinots of the Santa Rita Hills area down south:
    http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2010/04/transverse-transcendence.html

    • The Hurley sounds good. Maybe Thanksgiving if you haven’t drank it by then. I plan on bringing a couple of good wines over then.

      Thanks for the link. We were down there in August and stopped in at LaFond, Alma Rosa and one other I can’t remember right now.