Wine Wednesday: the proper care and feeding of Bordeaux

Real wine lovers, I've heard, will go to any lengths to track down a special bottle -- call dozens of wine stores in search of their quarry, cultivate relationships with wine merchants so they can have first dibs, drive out of state or even travel out of the country to get their hands on the object of their desire.

I've only done something like that once, and it was over an $11 Bordeaux I had at a restaurant in Denver: the Chateau Saint Sulpice 2003 Bordeaux.

Image from www.cellartracker.com.
The 2005 label was the only one I could find.

When I returned to the East Coast, I started asking every wine store in town if they carried this wine. They all said no. At this point I was determined to find it, so I started looking online at the inventories of large wine stores in New York City. I found two that carried it, and the next time we went into the city, Econo Boy and I bought two bottles.

A week later, we opened one ... and it was awful. Sharp, too alcoholic, no hint of fruit or the lovely soft finish I'd enjoyed at the restaurant. Baffled, we corked the bottle halfway through. What went wrong?

The next night, I poured myself a glass from the half-drunk bottle (I wasn't about to pour it out, not after all the work I'd done to find it), and was stunned to find that it was now delicious. A bit of Internet searching revealed my mistake: Bordeaux needs to breathe for at least an hour, preferably two. Oops. (I should note that anyone who knows anything about wine is probably laughing at me and my total ignorance right now. Oh well. The best way to learn is by screwing up, right?)

Does popping the cork two hours early sound like a drag? Buy a decanter.

Image from www.yourwinebasket.com.

I always thought these were just pretentious, goofy pieces of glassware, but now I understand what they're for!

Weddings and self-doubt

On my last post, Ruthie made a comment that kind of hit home for me: "it's easy to get down on yourself, wedding or no wedding."

It hit home for me because I've been doubting myself in a major way of late. It's not entirely about the wedding; in fact, it's mostly about my career prospects post-grad school. Long story short, I'm trying to make peace with the fact that given the awful job market, the chances of finding a job in my chosen field are ... not great. Actually, close to zero. Coping with that reality has been hard, and isn't exactly a recipe for high self-esteem.

Mostly the wedding has been a fun escape, and a source of minor victories (we finalized the invitation wording! hooray!). But sometimes it makes me feel like the biggest, most incompetent idiot in the world. Today I almost curled into a ball because we have a pretty substantial surplus in our budget (I know, the horror) and I couldn't decide if we wanted to spend the money to upgrade our menu from just chicken to chicken and beef. Sometimes I wonder if I should have picked a different dress, or whether the brightly colored flowers I planned will look weird in a historic mansion, or if we chose the wrong caterer. I know that none of this is important, that as long as we get the marriage license and our officiant shows up our wedding will be a success in the only way that really matters. But I've never been a stylish or terribly creative person and it's so easy to second-guess myself about fashion choices and color schemes.

Ruthie's comment made me realize that I was giving in to the same kind of pressure that I'd sneered at in the post about wedding diets: the pressure to Make Things Perfect. That realization caught me by surprise, and I hope now I can take a deep breath and remind myself that no matter what I do, it won't be perfect. Which means I can stop second-guessing myself, do the best I can, and know that it's good enough -- and "good enough" will probably still be pretty special, at least to the two of us.

Image from ProjectWedding.com.

Bulging brides?

By now, unless you're not a frequent reader of the wedding blogosphere, you've almost certainly seen Sarah Haskins's brilliant skewering of various crappy wedding shows like "Bridezillas." (Full disclosure: I do not get cable, and thus cannot vouch for the crappiness of all of these shows, but just based on the clips, I'm willing to go out on a limb and guess that the shows do in fact suck.)

See, aren't you annoyed already? Image from WeTV.com.

My favorite bit in the video is when Sarah shows us clips from a show called "Bulging Brides." The show opens on a charming note, as a trainer enters the bridal salon and says, "Jennifer is looking like a chubster in that wedding dress!" while his nutritionist sidekick emphatically nods her head in agreement. Poor Jennifer is then dragged off to have someone show her all of the places where her dress doesn't fit right, and is then forced to confront all of her bad food choices in the "Aisle of Shame" and is shown an image of what she could look like in 3 years if she doesn't change her ways.

The best part? Jennifer looks like she wears a size 4. And her horrible future? Size 8 at the biggest. Also, no one seems to consider the option of ordering a dress in the correct size, which is the real problem with our "bulging bride."

Ick. What is it with "wedding diets?" Ever since I made our engagement "Facebook official," Facebook.com's targeted advertising has shown me hundreds of "skinny bride" ads that promise to make me slim by my wedding day. Like the diet industry doesn't make enough money, now they have to sell engaged women on the idea that only women who starve and exercise themselves to two sizes below their normal weight are allowed to get married in public?

And, as Jennifer the size 4 "chubster" proves, already being slim is no guarantee you'll escape the pressure. Remember, you can never be too skinny! If you're a size 6, you should be trying to get down to a size 4. Size 4 already? Why not try for the 2? And if you're a size 0, well, that's great and all, but you still need the diet industry's help, because your arms have no muscle tone and your butt *could* be perkier.

Well, bite me, "Bulging Brides," Facebook, and any other wedding-related diet ads. I don't plan to lose a single pound for my wedding day.

Look, if brides use the wedding as motivation to make a lifestyle change they've wanted to make for a while, that's awesome. But the pressure to crash-diet and do 3 hours of cardio per day every day until the wedding in order to look like a "hot bride" is ridiculous and should be ignored. Jennifer would have been a hot bride even without the "intervention" of that obnoxious trainer. As women, we're already faced with almost constant pressure to lose weight, no matter what size we are. Do we really need to scoop on an extra helping for brides-to be? No.

Wine Wednesday: Di Majo Norante Sangiovese

A few months ago, Bon Appetit magazine listed their 10 favorite whites and 10 favorite reds under $10, and Econo Boy and I were excited to see that one of our own favorites made the list: the Di Majo Norante Sangiovese.

Image from www.telegraphwine.co.uk.

This was the first wine we ever bought by the case -- at $8 a bottle for a wine this good, we couldn't pass it up, and we've since gone back for another full case!

Sangiovese is a light Italian red and, in our opinion, is best with food. It's fine when you sip it by itself, but something about the combination of Sangiovese and chicken parmesan, or Sangiovese and pork tenderloin, or heck, Sangiovese with mac and cheese, that really makes this wine special. This is a perfect pick for a dinner party where your guests enjoy wine but won't want it to overpower the food.

Rethinking the invitations

First, an update on the dress: It fits. Almost perfectly. It needs to be taken in up top (no surprises there) but otherwise it's amazing! I'm so relieved :-)

Like I said in an earlier post, I've always loved paper and stationery, and with the possible exception of the dress, the invitations may be the wedding item I've spent the most time thinking about. I've poured over invitation websites, ordered lots of samples, and eventually I thought I'd made a decision: go with a pretty, colorful, flat-printed invitation.

But I couldn't quite shake a certain disappointment at the idea of using flat printing. I love the feeling of raised print, and I extra-love the old-fashioned texture of letterpress. I also couldn't shake a skeptical voice in the back of my head. "Digital printing?" the voice whispered. "You *could* print something like that yourselves, you know. Why not just buy some nice card stock or a pretty DIY kit and put the extra money into the food?"

When I asked Econo Boy for his opinion, he admitted that he'd been thinking the same thing about flat printing but hadn't wanted to say anything. Together, we decided that we'd go with one of two options: one, print them ourselves and save money, or two, beef up the invitations budget and choose a more exotic printing method.

Mmm, pretty paper! Image from Dauphine Press, one of
many wonderful letterpress printers who's way out of our budget.

Inspired by Sweet T, I began considering a combination of flat and letterpress printing -- letterpress (preferably 2-color) for the invitations, and flat printing for the RSVP cards and envelopes. Unfortunately, few of the major invitations websites offer matched sets of mismatched printing. Hello!Lucky was the exception -- they now offer all of their letterpress invitations and RSVP cards in less expensive, digital print versions, so we could have ordered a letterpress invitation and a matching flat print RSVP card. But none of their invites seemed to fit quite what we were going for, and even their one-color options were slightly out of our price range.

So I decided to take a chance. I posted an ad on Etsy explaining what we wanted, what our budget was, and decided to see if there were any takers. I half expected to get a bunch of responses saying "that's not a realistic price for letterpress, but I can do it for $X more."

Instead, a printer with her own letterpress contacted me and said she could do exactly what we wanted, at exactly our price point! She even designed the perfect two-columbines motif for the top of our invitation. I'll hold off on an official endorsement until we have the invites in hand, but so far, so good.

For any other couples on a budget who are interested in letterpress, I absolutely recommend Etsy's Alchemy advertising board. I got lots of responses from printers -- some weren't quite what we wanted, but they were all professional and quick to respond. Even if you think no one could possibly work with your budget, give it a try. You might be pleasantly surprised to find out you were wrong!

Mmmm, cake

I love being able to use vendors recommended by friends. At the engagement party I mentioned in my last post, recently-married friends "Jane" and "Janet" overheard me talking about an upcoming tasting at a local bakery. Both immediately pounced. "You *have* to try Mulberries!" they exclaimed enthusiastically.

I was pretty sure we were going with the bakery where we'd already scheduled a tasting, but what the heck, free cake is free cake. Econo Boy called Mulberries and got us an appointment.

I'm so glad we took their advice! The other bakery was great, but more expensive than we'd anticipated, and a bit more into the giant Martha Stewart Weddings cakes and not so excited about the simple picture I showed them. On the other hand, Mulberries was pretty much our dream bakery. They don't even use the hated fondant -- their cakes wear buttercream and only buttercream. The cakes were moist and delicious. And they had my absolute favorite cake combination in the entire world: marble cake with chocolate pudding filling.

To save money, and to enable our caterers to serve cake almost immediately after the cake-cutting ceremony, we're going with a small 50-person decorated cake with a large sheet cake in the back. We're doing two flavors: marble/chocolate pudding and lemon/fresh raspberries. The outside of the fancy cake will look pretty much like this, only with summer berries instead of fall fruits.

Image from Brides.com

Only one question remains ... should we add something to the sides of the cake? My mom suggested that we add a bit of pattern to the icing, like this photo.

Image from Brides.com

What do you think? Clean and classic (i.e. leave it plain), or a bit fancier and more romantic (i.e. add some decoration)?

Falling behind but still drinking wine!

Over the holidays, a family friend threw an engagement party for Econo Boy and me, with a unique twist: all attendees had to bring a bottle of wine that cost $12 or less to help fuel our search for fabulous but affordable wedding wines! After much discussion, Econo Boy and I are looking for 4 wines: a light red (Pinot Noir, Sangiovese or similar), a fuller-bodied red (Cabernet, Zinfandel, or Shiraz), a crisp white (probably Pinot Grigrio or Sauvignon Blanc) and a rich white (Viognier or a Spanish white).

Several good finds may make their way into Wine Wednesdays in the future, but for now I'll list my favorite white and favorite red of the evening. My favorite white was provided by my very own mother: the 2007 Gimenez Riili Torrontes, a citrusy wine that was crisp and clean without being too thin or too sharp. We didn't even open this one the night of the party, but when the family popped the cork several nights later, this wine met with rave reviews. Score another one for South America!

Image from Vines of Mendoza.

The only drawback seems to be that my mom found an amazing deal on this wine! Most websites list its price at $13-$15 a bottle, but Mom swears she paid only $10.49. If we can find another deal, this could be our "crisp white" winner!

We also loved an Australian blend called Shoofly Aussie Salute (although certain family members questioned whether we really wanted to serve a wine called "Shoofly" at our wedding! To which I say, "if it's a good wine, sure, why not?"). Shoofly is a blend of Shiraz and Grenache with a bit of Viognier, and it's spicy and full-bodied, distinctive and great with food. Anyone who's still harboring anti-screw-top snobbery needs to try this one.

Image from Wine.com

On a more serious note: over the break I've felt very grateful for all of the wonderful people Econo Boy and I have in our lives. The way people have been offering help left and right is astonishing, and that someone would be willing to host such an amazing engagement party for us is very special.

When we met with our officiant a few days ago, she asked if we wanted to do a "congregational affirmation" -- basically, she asks the assembled guests if they will support our marriage and our new family, and the guests answer "we will." This hadn't occurred to me, but when she suggested it, it seemed to make a lot of sense -- a way to include everyone who has been so supportive and wonderful to us as a couple. But is that too cheesy? What say you?