FriendlyAg said:

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Where do you guys buy wine in Dallas besides directly from wineries?

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+1 for Total Wine and works great to just have them deliver to you. Much better selection of old world wine versus a lot of other options.

The new HEB store on Preston Rd in Plano has an impressive selection of wine for grocery store. They have wine that buyers attend auctions to purchase.

You North Texas folks are going to realize your neighborhood HEB has some of the best wines out there. They do a great job buying, the Bunker Hill store in Houston is fantastic around the holidays.

Tried Shiava for the first time yesterday. Really fun wine to try out…very different from the normal wines that most of us drink. Light, nuanced, red fruit that is delivered in a refreshing and poundable wine. Wish I had a case of it laying around!

Believe I got this one for something around $22? Been a few months. Anyways, I highly recommend it!

love these types of wines. an elegant and light red is a thing of beauty

Cyp0111 said:

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You North Texas folks are going to realize your neighborhood HEB has some of the best wines out there. They do a great job buying, the Bunker Hill store in Houston is fantastic around the holidays.

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that store is more a rarity.. most of their shelves are full of the giant producer "brands"

Awesome.
Needs more bubbles.
Not many people have Amizetta. Cool to see that in someone else's cellar.

aggiejumper said:

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Awesome.
Needs more bubbles.
Not many people have Amizetta. Cool to see that in someone else's cellar.

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Amizetta is good. Tasted there about 5 or 6 years ago. Great views from Howell Mountain.

I'm a wine club member at Amizetta. They also make one of the better merlots out there.

Daroush has a great Merlot!
Love it when my friend pulls a bottle out!

Had a 2014 Toscana IGT that was Merlot-centric the other day, was really good. Merlot and Cab Franc took up 92% of the bill. CS and PV the other 8%.

It's pricey but Blankiet Rive Droite is a fabulous merlot.

Just a heads up this has your personal information on the receipt… may want to remove this picture a post one of the bottles on the counter without the paper receipt below.

Just a heads up this has your personal information on the receipt… may want to remove this picture a post one of the bottles on the counter without the paper receipt below.

Double post

Nice! UPS told me I had wine coming today and I wasn't sure what it was, so I assume I'll be receiving mine too.

We bought some Rivers Marie chards today. The Theriot is a favorite of mine. I passed on Maybach today since it was mostly library wines in the offering because of the 2020 fires.

Celebrated a friend's 50th tonight (night 1 of 2):

2002 Pol Roger champagne - terrific bottle of wine
2012 Seven Stones

Welcome! Great haul.

Turkey is good bang for the buck!

I'm now hooked on Last Bottle! I'm not sure what compels me to want to buy everything I see pop up.

friend's 50th tonight (night 2 of 2):

2017 Rivers Marie B Theriot chard
2011 Scarecrow cab sauv (incredibly smooth, perfect spot for this wine/vintage)

I'm a fan of Turley's Amador county offerings. I have stopped buying, however, as I'm trying to spend my money on different varieties now a days.


For any WA wine fans, drank a '12 Abeja Heather Hill Cab yesterday and it was a really nice wine. Sub $50 when I bought it I think.

Just thought I'd share a brief wine story. Over the holidays we got into the wine collection my parents have of bottles they've collected over the years. I pulled out a bottle I recognized from my rehearsal dinner. I had bought it plenty of times over the years at HEB after the wedding but I hadn't seen it in a while so I was certainly excited to enjoy it again.

We opened it up and it was incredible. Just super rich and way more complex than I remembered it. Was a great wine. And I was surprised because this had always been more of a solid 'good' wine every time I had enjoyed it before.

Then I looked more closely at the bottle. It wasn't a later year from the same winery. It was a bottle that was bought right after the rehearsal dinner as a keepsake. Bottle was from 2014.

Glad we all enjoyed it together.

Now going to start a wine collection myself.

What were the 2 bottles.

Sounds familiar to a mistake I made at my in laws back around Thanksgiving. They had a Joseph Phelps Insignia and someone asked me if it was any good and how nice of a bottle it was. I looked at it and wrongfully just assumed "oh yea I've heard of Joseph Phelps. Napa red? This is probably a $75-$90 bottle." I should have known I was a couple hundred bucks off from the fancy glass it came in.

We opened it before I verified cost and it was pretty tasty, lot of us got to try some. This family and group can normally, and does normally, drink much cheaper than that though. Apparently this bottle snuck in because it was a gift to one of my in-laws from a friend.

It was a 2014 Estancia Pasa Robles Cabernet Sauvignon. Was around a $20 bottle back then, and was around $50-60 a bottle to enjoy at our rehearsal dinner. It was a good bottle, nothing on the scale shared here, and was fun to go pick up a later vintage or two over the years when we were young, in love, and $20 for a bottle of wine was pushing our budgets.

That was probably the last 2014 Estancia around as it isn't really a collectors vintage. For most, any aging on the shelf is done unintentionally after being picked up at an HEB and forgotten about.

Ironically, my wife and I had picked out a red wine that we loved dearly back then for everyone to enjoy at the wedding. It was a Duchman Canto Felice and we bought case after case so literally everyone could have a glass at the toast. It was way too much. And our early 20s palletes were way too sweet.

It was just as old as the Estancia, we still have a few bottles left over, but we can't touch the stuff because its just so sweet now.

Looks like the restaurant we had our rehearsal dinner at was better at choosing wines than a bunch of young 20 somethings. Whodathunkit.

Quote:

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when we were young, in love, and $20 for a bottle of wine was pushing our budgets.

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Honestly those were fun years. It also takes little effort to buy a good bottle north of $100. You got to really want it to find those good but cheap bottles!

Anyone have their Texas A&M wine yet?

mek94 said:

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Last Bottle has Italics "Pursue" available this morning. Couldn't find a whole lot of info about the wine itself, but I figured for $29 it was worth a try.

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Thanks, I just grabbed a six pack. Because there is not much info out there on this label, I wonder if this one was club-only, or if perhaps this is a one-off label they created just to shed some inventory they had sitting in barrels from a blend or blends that new owners are not going to continue offering.

I also grabbed two of the Italics two packs they offered a few weeks ago. One was from their regular lineup, and like this one the other was a label I couldn't find any info about. I opened one of those last week, and it was fantastic. Looking forward to trying these.

Last night we opened a bottle of 2016 Hamel Family Isthmus that I'd picked up on Last Bottle in December. It was wonderful. I've had good luck with my LB purchases lately.