Chateau Paul Mas - 2005 Coteaux Du Languedoc

$15 at McCarthy and Schiering. It's late, so this is going to be short. According to the label on the back, it's a syrah/grenahce blend. It has the lovely, smooth, dark fruit of good syrah and the nice tannins to boot. It's very full bodied, Jenny says it "tastes like a November wine." In short, well worth the $15.

Douro - 2006 Vale Da Clara

$11 at McCarthy and Schiering. I wrote about this wine in the pre-blog days. From March 23, 2008:

Very tasty, complex, with darker fruit flavors and nice tannins. A great deal at $11. A little too dark to accompany the simple, bright tomato sauce I served it with: sautée some rosemary and two cloves garlic, dump in some canned diced tomatoes, salt and pepper, drizzle with balsamic and cook until it thickens a bit, correct seasoning and toss with pasta, torn basil and fresh parm.

I'm going to buy a case of this stuff, but I'll reserve it for food a tad meatier. I think it would be perfect with something like my chicken cacciatore.

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Apparently I forgot about the above advice, because after buying every bottle McCarthy and Schiering had in stock, I served it tonight with a vegetable soup. While it again overpowered the delicate flavors of the dish, this bottle remains a steal at $11. With the weather turning, I'll be grilling soon and this Douro will be the perfect accompaniment.

Domaine Roc De Chateauvieux - 2006 Loire Pinot Noir

$11 from McCarthy and Scheiring. I was delighted to find that the French grow Pinot Noir in places other than Burgundy. This is a very pleasant and easy table wine. Exceedingly food friendly, I think it it would be a good match with nearly anything brought to the table; it certainly went well with the delicate vegetable soup I made tonight. It's got a floral, almost perfumy nose, and bright acidity balanced by fine tannins.

As an added bonus, it's bottled with a Stelvin closure (aka screwcap), so it's easy to open. It's a Vin De Pays, which I've learned is a French wine classification that translates to "country wine." This classification is below Apellation d'Origine Controlee (AOC), but above Vin De Table.

A steal at $11. I'm going to buy a case of this to have on hand for weeknight dinners.

Telepatch: my other blog

Way back in the dot.com boom, I worked for a great little company called Net Perceptions. The engineers sat in a giant cube farm, where the cubes were organized in little groups of four that my friend Dan called "cube patches."

I shared my patch with three of the best people you could ever hope to work with: Dan, Scott and JJ. With the dot.com bust and the demise of Net Perceptions, we've taken different jobs and scattered across the country. We've kept in touch via e-mail, and often pine for the good old days and camaraderie of "the patch."

A couple weeks ago, we started a group blog called telepatch, where we prairie-dog remotely. It's been fun so far, you should check it out.

Tom Colligrino

Last Saturday was very warm here in Seattle. It was sunny and the high probably got close to 70. It felt like the beginning of summer, so I bought the ingredients for one of my favorite summer cocktails, the Tom Colligrino.

This drink was invented by my good friend Darren Vengroff. It's nothing more than a shot of vodka and half a can of San Pellegrino Limonata, on the rocks with a slice of lime. Fancy-pants mixologists out there may look down on the Tom Colligrino as unsophisticated, but to my mind it elegantly captures the low-stress, back-porch, hanging out with friends essence of summer.

Of course yesterday the weather was miserable: it hailed in the morning, and all afternoon was a mix of rain and snow. But some days you come home from work and you want a cocktail. Yesterday was one of those days for both Jenny and me, and I've found that if you close your eyes and sip a summer cocktail you can conjure the feeling of summer regardless of the current conditions.

Farecast acquired by Microsoft

Farecast, the company I work for, has been acquired by Microsoft. I'm probably not allowed to say much more at the moment, but the fact of the acquisition is public knowledge.

Quinta De La Rosa - 2004 Douro

$18 at McCarthy and Schiering. Yum! I really, really like good Douros, which may be unsurprising given my affinity for port. This wine has big, dark fruit and elegant tannins, perhaps a bit shy on the acid, but I don't miss it at all. It's very full bodied, so much that I wanted to describe it as "rich," as if every sip was a little bite of dessert, even though it's not sweet. (This was, perhaps, a tad distressing as my mid-western upbringing makes me eschew dessert until I've "earned it" at the end of a meal. Oh, the tribulations I must overcome!)

Sadly, it's out of my price range for a nightly opener. I pulled it out tonight to have with asparagus and a simple tomato sauce over pasta only because it's been siting in my cupboard, bugging me, for weeks and I could no longer resist.

In short: well worth the $18, go buy some.