Two Nerd Party

Company: Chado Tea Market
Type: Flavored Green

Now that it's finally started to cool down in Texas I have been craving wintry-styled drinks. All of the teas I currently have stashed at work are commercial tea bags, so I stopped by Chado over lunch today to pick up something a bit nicer. The Temple of Heaven is a green tea flavored with chocolate and vanilla and blended with rooibos tea. I love teas flavored with chocolate and vanilla, but most of the time they're black teas. I usually put milk into black teas, and since I don't generally have milk at work I wanted to try something different. The flavorings give the tea a lot of sweetness. I also noticed that this one doesn't give me that weird cottonmouth that some green teas do. This is a definite keeper.

Uploaded by sushi the great

Region: Romania
Vintage: 2005
Price: $8.99

Hoo boy. First of all I should add a disclaimer: I do not generally drink Pinot Noir, so I don't necessarily have a good base for comparison.

I picked this up on a lark when I was getting some supplies for a Halloween party. Yes, gimmicky things are cheesy, but it was on sale and I thought it couldn't hurt to try.

When I peeled the foil off the top I saw that the cork was one of those horrible plastic things. Oh, how I hate those. Of course when I tried to uncork it the corkscrew kept slipping out. I had to get Dane to do it for me, and he even needed several tries to do it. When he finally got it open I saw that it's red printed with black werewolf slashes, same as the logo on the bottle. Cute, but I think I'd rather have a real cork that I can actually OPEN, thanks.

When I poured it I took a couple of good long sniffs (hey, I'm trying to become a real wine connoisseur, here). The only thing I could say to Dane was "hmm...smells like...tannins." I honestly couldn't make anything else out, just the alcohol smell. Drinking it is a similar experience. It's not a very smooth wine. It is possible that a higher tannin content is something that occurs more often with a Pinot Noir (so I should probably do a bit of reading) but I didn't really enjoy this one very much. I wouldn't even chalk it up to the cost, as several of my favorite wine staples cost less than this. I doubt I'll pick this one up again.

Hopefully the Vampire Cabernet I got on the same trip will fare a bit better.

Uploaded by sushi the great

We made a trip to Specs a few weeks ago where I replenished the wine supply. The La Posta is the most expensive one I picked up, but still under $20. I can't remember if I've had a Malbec before. I really enjoyed this one. It has a pretty heavily spiced finish, so it's nice for drinking while sitting on the patio and enjoying the fall weather.

Uploaded by sushi the great

We made a spur of the moment purchase this weekend and got the pasta maker attachment for our mixer! I'm excited to try it out, hopefully sometime this week. (The kitchen was a bit too crowded yesterday with Dane making pepper jelly.)