Backlog of reviews from the weekend in Asheville

Clearing up the backlog of reviews from Asheville.  I'll start off with the beer reviews:

26. Highland Brewing Company - St. Terese's Pale Ale
27. Highland Brewing Company - Little Hump
28. Highland Brewing Company - Gaelic Ale
29. Highland Brewing Company - Oatmeal Porter
30. Wicked Weed Brewing - People's Choice Pale Ale
31. Wicked Weed Brewing - Coercer
32. Biltmore Brewing Company (brewed at Highland Brewing) - Cedric's Pale Ale
33. Unibroue - Ephemere Apple
34. New Belgium Brewing Company - Foudre #1
35. New Belgium Brewing Company - Foudre #17
36. New Belgium Brewing Company - Foudre #28
37. Liefman's - Goudenband

And now a bit of food and drink again from the weekend in Asheville.

38. Cedric's Tavern (Biltmore Estate) - Cedric's house-made pickles:  Sweet dill pickle with onion and lots of cider-vinegar.  Also had slices of pickled onion in the jar.  These were some of the best pickles I've had in a very long time.  I also found the recipe for the pickles here.  I'm going to make some of these up this summer!
39. Cedric's Tavern (Biltmore Estate) - Ham and cheese fondue appetizer.  This was made with a salty, Virginia-style country ham thinly sliced and melted white cheddar. It was served with grilled sourdough and was very good.  
40. French Broad Chocolates - Cacoa nib brownie:  A cake-ish brownie filled with cocoa nibs baked right into the dough.  Very very good - rich taste of the brownie mixed with the crunch of the nibs giving some contrasting texture.  Delicious!
41. French Broad Chocolates - Oaxaca: "A contemporary Mexican hot chocolate with house-ground chocolate, almonds, organic sugar, cinnamon & milk. this is what you’d get in a chocolate shop on the streets of Oaxaca."  This is incredibly rich and I would say could be tempered some with a cold glass of milk.  Take your favorite dark chocolate almond bar, add a touch of cinammon, and some high quality milk then liquify it and you have a good idea of what this was like.  Super good but oh so rich.  I could get very very fat if I lived in Asheville just from eating French Broad Chocolates. 

42. Wicked Weed Brewpub - Corn-dusted trout aioli sandwich: Crispy, crusty bread with a nice mild trout filet.  Aioli is a bit too vinegary with the mildness of the trout, but very good.  Fries that came with it are very good and salted with sea salt, but they were a bit overcooked.  

A couple of quick tastes from yesterday and today.  

24. Atlantic Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale
25. Brett and Megan Wedding Raspberry Melomel - This taste is 10 years in the making.  I opened a bottle of raspberry mead that we made for the wedding.  It has aged very nicely.  It was intended to be a slightly effervescent sweet mead and it is quite good.  The aroma is full of berry and honey, it is sweet, but not cloyingly so, and just very very slightly bubbly.  I didn't like this initially, but as I have found with mead, you gotta let it age!  What a nice surprise!
    

Although we still have a backlog of tastes to add, we tried something new today.

23. Homestead Creamery strawberry milk.  Kroger had some bottles on special, one strawberry and one orange, so we bought both.  Megan didn't like it much at all as it wasn't strawberry enough for her.  I thought it was okay but I may have been overwhelmed by the great milk behind the flavor.  To me it tasted like the milk leftover from a bowl of Frankenberry cereal.

Memorial Day weekend tastes

This Memorial Day weekend we got to sample a number of new tastes.  One wasn't necessarily new (ie, the Torpedo tasting note below - just backlogged), but the rest are new tastes.

18. Sierra Nevada - Torpedo Extra IPA
19. Terrapin Ridge Farms - Sweet Red Onion White Balsamic Dressing:  This is Megan's new favorite.  Nice balsamic taste without being too sour and a light onion taste lingers on the palate.
20. Stonewall Kitchen - Roasted Peach Whiskey Sauce:  My goodness this is delicious.  We tried it with some steak and it wasn't that great a combination, but combine this with pork or chicken and you'd be in heaven.  Nice peach flavor, but the fruit isn't overwhelming at all.  I would recommend this on a grilled pork chop.
21. Bone Suckin' Yaki - teriyaki-style sauce:  Meh for me as I don't really like Teriyaki that well, but everyone else loved it.  It's got some surprising dark chocolate overtones and is incredibly rich - a little bit would go a very very long way.
22. Dr. Pete's Praline Mustard Glaze - Delicious on steak and I imagine most anything else (like a simple spoon).  The jar recommended serving this over baked brie and that would definitely be a classic choice, but this is really really good.  There's a lot of that classic praline flavor, with both the pecan and brown sugar being particularly apparent.  Seriously good.

An Introduction

Megan read about a guy in Blacksburg who was trying to taste 1000 new beers in a single calendar year.  That seemed like a fairly fun thing to do, but we thought limiting ourselves to just beer would be too difficult (and expensive).  So we instead decided to celebrate our 10th anniversary by trying 1000 new tastes, of any type.

We are going to limit ourselves to tastes between January 1, 2013 and our 11th anniversary (May 17, 2014).  Where are most of our new tastes going to come from?

• wine and beer tastings at The Vintage Cellar - this is our go to shop for new wines and beers and they offer weekly wine and beer tastings and excellent prices on everything they carry
• beer and cheese tastings on our anniversary trip to the Northeast, especially including beers, cheeses, and maple syrup
• new restaurants and foods as we travel north, especially real Phillie cheesesteaks, Boston cream pie, and Maine lobster rolls

We'll keep a running list of our new tastes here - we have quite a backlog of wine tastings to enter.  For foods, we'll report on tastes here. 

For wine, we'll keep a list updated here, but our actual reviews/tasting notes will be on CellarTracker.com.

• Brett and Megan's tasting notes

For beer, we'll keep a list updated here, but our actual reviews/tasting notes will be on RateBeer.com.

• Brett's Beer tasting notes

Some of the backlogged tastings:

1. 2007 - Ravenswood - Zinfandel Vintner's Blend
2. 2010 - Argiano - Rosso Toscano IGT
3. 2010 - Paride Iaretti Gattinara - Uvenere MMX
4. 2011 - Wine by Joe - Pinot Gris
5. 2010 - Trapiche - Malbec Oak Creek
6. Sea Dog Raspberry Wheat Ale
7. New Belgium 1554 Enlightened Black Ale
8. New Belgium Lips of Faith - Transatlantique Kriek
9. Asheville Brewing Company - Rolands ESB
10. Highland Brewing Company - Black Mocha Stout
11. Highland Brewing Company - Devil's Britches IPA
12. 2010 - Nopa - Vinho Verde
13. (non-vintage) - Biltmore Estate - Sauvignon Blanc
14. 2011 - Biltmore Estate - Chardonnay Biltmore Reserve
15. 2011 - Biltmore Estate - American Pinot Grigio
16. (non-vintage) - Biltmore Estate - American Riesling
17. 2005 - Amrhein Wine Cellars - Sauvignon Blanc