No Shoes, No Salmon, No Dice.

Another lovely Friday night drive on the 101 freeway, struggling to get home and have some dinner. After the long, grueling week, the thought of having to get dressed and wait for table somewhere just wasn’t sounding very appealing. I wanted to get home, lock the door behind me and take off my shoes, plop down on the sofa and have some dinner and a glass of vino. Thank God for California Pizza Kitchen and their curbside service.

Call in the order, swing by twenty minutes later, and they bring the food (and the credit card swiper) right up to your car. No waiting, and I was in the house a few minutes later. Off went the shoes and I sat down to enjoy my salmon Caesar salad.

To my dismay, upon pulling the salad, I found that the salmon had gone missing. Are you kidding me? The worse thing that a restaurant employee could possibly do to me on a Friday night is leave out the main ingredient to my dinner. Just as I started cursing my good friends at CPK, my wife called out… “Hey, I’ve got an extra box in my bag, I think it’s yours…”

Mystery solved, I poured a glass of the selected Friday-night-grape-juice, a little Spanish number from the sale shelf.

The 2006 Castro de Lobarzán Blanco got an 89 from Stephen Tanzer, and is a blend of two Spanish grapes you may not have heard of: Godello and Treixadura.

I’m not sure why, but I assumed it would drink like a Sauvignon Blanc. I detected some lemony citrus on the nose, but at the same time the nose was not like a Sauv Blanc at all. There was a sort of bitter/acid/mineral thing going on as well. Once I got some wine in my mouth, I got a faint blend of apples and pears with a coating of un-sweet citrus. The mouthfeel was nice and substantial, and I was left with a crisp reminder of the bitter minerals at the end.

It very nicely washed down my salad with the recovered salmon, and as I poured another glass as I kicked my feet up…