This week’s wine of choice was A to Z Wineworks’ 2005 Pinot Gris. Attentive readers of my blog may recall that I served another A to Z wine, a Pinot Blanc, just last month for my birthday. I swear I don’t have any sort of affiliation with A to Z Wineworks. I promise they aren’t paying me or subsidizing my blog in any way. It is simply that this wine was on sale at our local wine store, and, since I really liked their Pinot Blanc, I was naturally curious to see what their Pinot Gris would be like. Plus, I figured this would be a good opportunity to compare the two wines to see if I could detect a significant difference between Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris. I think Pinot Gris tends to be crisper and lighter in body, but so much of a wine’s style depends on what the winemaker decides to do with their grapes, not just on the inherent differences between the grapes alone.

The Pinot Gris was very good. I’m afraid I don’t have much to say about it, but that certainly shouldn’t be taken as a bad sign. It was a perfectly nice, solid wine with lots of tropical and citrus fruit flavor. I could drink it often. I think it’s just that I have been trying too many similar wines lately, and I don’t want to bore everyone by describing yet another wine as “crisp and limey!” Overall, I think I liked the Pinot Blanc better. It was much more flavorful and gutsy than I had expected so it took me a bit by surprise. If you like a more restrained wine, then you would probably like the Pinot Gris more.

For dinner, I served a meal made straight out of my Boistfort Valley Farm CSA box. This is the second week of CSA boxes and, once again, I was very pleased with the contents. I made a simple risotto using fresh peas and garlic shoots, seasoned with just a touch of grated parmesan cheese. On the side, I served carrots with sage and butter, which seems like more of a fall or winter dish to me, but, carrots and sage came in the box so they must be in season. I also had a salad of green leaf and red leaf lettuce taken from the hugest heads I have ever seen - seriously, I could barely pick them up! I topped the salad with goat cheese and a mix of red beets (leftover from last week’s box) and Chioggia beets (from this week’s box.) The Chioggia beets are Italian and, when cooked, are striped pinkish-gold inside. Very pretty. For dessert, we had fresh cherries, which are rapidly becoming my all-time favorite fruit (although last week’s strawberries were pretty hard to top!)