Tastelive Cafe 140 Inaugural webcast with Patrick Krutz of Krutz Family Cellars and HouseBand Wines

Honored to help kick off the inaugural webcast of Tastelive's Cafe 140 from the Heritage Public House in Santa Rosa sponsored by The Wineyard. Winemaker Patrick Krutz of Krutz Family Cellars and HouseBand Wines treated the bloggers to some wonderful wine, Chef John Lyle of Hardcore Farm to Face provided some excellent food pairings and John Pita provided great songs from his Color My World release plus Joel Quigley as our host. In attendance around the US Katie Pizzuto, Grace Hoffman, Ward Kadel, Lain Bradford, Frank Morgan, Megan Kenney and yours truly.

A couple of really fun wines started our evening off featuring HouseBand Wines 375ml flex pouches. Pour in a glass or drink from the pouch, this is the winelovers travel friend. Take it to picnics, the beach or the pool (I hear mom's love it there). Chardonnay was the first wine of the evening full of aromas apple, pear, wild flower. The flavor of pear, apple, fresh peach and ripe apricot was nice. Fun wine to start the evening.

Up next flex pouch # 2 Merlot. Aromas of plum, spice, pepper and mocha. The flavor was very spicy and packed some nice red fruit with hints of dark chocolate. I believe one of the comments "wine in a pouch that doesn't suck!" What a cool idea.

Wine 3 of the evening the 2009 Krutz Family Cellars Akins Family Vineyard Pinot Noir Anderson Valley. Loads of dark cherry on the nose with cinnamon spice and clove. Crimson in color this wine is very pleasing to the nose. Wonderful flavor with fresh cherry and ripe raspberry, dark tea towards the middle of the taste followed by a nice hint of spice. The finish is both soft and elegant with the raspberry/cherry begging you to drink more. Grand slam on this one Patrick.

The final wine of the evening was the 2008 Krutz Family Cellars Stagecoach Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley. My first introduction to Krutz Cellars was a bottle of cabernet and to date the 07 was my favorite but now replaced with this 08. Nice dark fruit aromas of blackberry with hints of blueberry, cloves, vanilla and toasty oak. The flavor was delicious with blackberry, mocha, hints of earthiness and raspberry with a slight smokey finish. This bottle is top shelf cabernet!

Joel, Cailyn, Patrick, John and John it was a great evening and very appreciative to have joined the fun. To learn more about tonights wine, food and music click the links Krutz Family Cellars HouseBand Wines John Pita

Cheers!
Dan