Wine Review: Dark Star Cellars

A couple of months ago, we had the fortune of doing a little wine tasting excursion while driving back from the Bay area. One of the wineries we stopped by was Dark Star Cellars.

We liked what we tasted there, and ended up taking home a couple of bottles. Night before last, we tried Celebration:

"A celebration of Harvest! To make this wine, we remove 100 gals of juice from each lot of grapes that comes to the winery during harvest. We place all the juice in one tank and slowly ferment it at forty degrees during the entire harvest, adding juice each time we harvest a vineyard. At the end of Harvest we celebrate by warming the tank and finishing the wine. This wine was fermented over a two month period."

This is a sweet blush. It's a great desert wine. We had it post pizza as I was craving something light and refreshing. We ended up downing the whole bottle and getting quite tipsy. Well, that was fun. :-) This wine is delicious ice cold. It is a lot like drinking a *very* refined wine cooler. Definitely worth a try.

Last night we indulged in the Ricordati:

"Ricordati (always remember) Is a complex Bordeaux style blend of Cabernet Sauvignon (63%), Merlot (30%), and Cabernet Franc (7%). This wine in its ten year history has won 18 Gold Medals and a Best In Class at International Wine Competitions. Deep, Dark, Cherry, Plum, Raspberry, Maple. Excellent with Pastas, Red Sauces and Meats.
Only 750 cases produced."

Now this wine was deep and complex. It's a great red dinner wine. Very leggy and a bit spicy. Give it breathing room and sip it slowly. We're waiting to finish off the bottle with some pasta and crusty bread. At the winery, we were told that Ricordati was named to remember those that had lived before us. Very cool. I give it 4.5 stars out of 5 compared to my favorite reds.

A note to the Vegan Police: I had an email exchange with the winemaker and they do not use any animal products during any process. Most better wines don't these days. I checked for isinglass, etc. I routinely check and I want to encourage vegans and vegetarians to not forego wine due to the widespread notion in the vegan community that 99.9% of wines use animal products. It's just not true and you don't have to restrict yourself to something marked organic coming out of a soy field in some backcountry. Just do your research (and stay away from the boxed stuff :-))