Announcing a new Friday Feature.....Best and Worst Wine of the Week

I am an avid wine drinker and lover.........I have many leather bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany....... and people ask me all the time what I've had recently that I've enjoyed. I even have a friend that calls me from restaurants with wine list in hand asking for recommendations. We've affectionately named this the "dial a sommelier". In an effort to get your weekend off on the right foot and to further highlight that this blog is decidedly for Johnson County Elites and not Wyandotte County Hilljacks I'm going to start a regular Friday post highlighting the best AND worst wine I've had this week. The wine I didn't like we'll call the Olbermann Wine....as in Keith Olbermann as in he sucks and is a jackass and you should avoid him on MSNBC at all costs. The wine I liked we'll call for now the Ingraham wine....for conservative author and talk show host Laura Ingraham because I think she is smart and pretty. I hope you enjoy it. Hey, and if you don't like wine at all I've just freed up your Friday blog reading time and you'll be saying, "Jocoeveryman....you know I don't speak Spanish...translate!" But if you like wine soon you'll be saying, "Oh, Jocoeveryman....your wine recommendations cut right through to the core of me......."

Enjoy and stay classy Johnson County!

The Ingraham Wine:

This week's best wine that you should try: 2005 Louis M. Martini Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley, California.

Where I drank it: JJ's on the Plaza.

Price: $10 a glass. Suggested retail at a wine shop $24.99

Thoughts: Funny how $10 has become the price at which you expect good but not incredible. This was actually pretty incredible especially for the price. Deep color and I smelled aromas full of black cherry and almost a mocha aroma followed by a nice whiff of oak or maybe cedar...okay some kind of wood. When I tasted it I enjoyed generous ripe fruit that was plum and black cherry and the mocha bean was confirmed and maybe with even a little tobacco like an unlit cigar. It finished with typical Napa cab tannins that were firm and a little dusty but not overpowering. This was a really satisfying glass of cab.

This week's Olbermann wine (you should avoid): 2006 Delta Pinot Noir, Marlborough, New Zealand.

Where I drank it: Trezo Vino at Park Place

Price: $14 a glass. Suggested Retail at a wine shop $22.99.

Thoughts: It had dark color not atypical of new world Pinot. At first smell I thought it might be pretty earthy which for me is a good thing in many Pinot Noirs but not typically found in New Zealand examples. I smelled it again and it just didn't have much fruit and I thought that perhaps the bottle was left over from the prior night.....which happens more than you know and most times it just doesn't hold up well overnight. My first taste confirmed what my nose was telling me that there wasn't much fruit let alone interesting fruit. I asked the the bartender if the bottle was left over from the prior night to give it one final chance but he told me that it wasn't. This wine at any price, not to mention the $14 a glass price tag, isn't very good. It simply didn't have much fruit character to it. The fruit is had exhibited characteristics of burnt fruit and wasn't bright at all. Drinking the Delta Pinot Noir is, well, like being forced to watch Keith Olbermann.

In Vino Veritas.