I invited my boys and their lady friends over for dinner Tuesday night, as it was a nice way to help send off my youngest son back to Iraq. (see Friends and Fun "Good News"). I cooked up some steaks, salad, veggies and rice and served the following wines:
1999 Domaine Le Las des Collines Cotes du Rhone - (under $20 I believe) 13% abv. Sour cherrys, tobacco and leather on the nose. Medium ruby color depth. Fairly high acid level and strong tannins, but medium finish. Pretty good wine that complemented the food nicely. On tasting the next night I realized the wine had a huge amount of sediment and I should have decanted it.
2001 Stratus Gamay - I purchased this at the winery in Niagara-On-The-Lake ($36 Cdn) during NiagaraCOOL '06. Deep color, medium red hue - no purple, no bricking. Very intense bouquet of sweet cherries with hints of tobacco. Very long finish with soft tannins hitting everywhere in the mouth. While high priced for Canadian Gamay this is the best red wine I've had in a while. Excellent!
2002 Dienhard Beerenauslese Rheinhessen - 10%abv. An inexpensive wine I picked up a while ago (>$10 - 375ml). Perfectly sound sweet dessert wine - melons and pears. Grape variety not listed on the label.
2005 Johnson Estate Vidal Ice Wine - 9.5% abv. 14% RS. 36 deg Brix at harvest. (About $20). This was a very nice ice wine - caramel, appricots and peaches. From the Lake Eries district of NY in Chataqua County this rivals ice wines from the Niagara Peninsula at more than twice the price. They also make a Delaware ice wine that is only available at the wiery. Very nice and good QPR.
Nice dinner, nice wines and we all had a good time. See, sometimes I drink "store-bought" wines.