Come check out our show tonight, featuring local musicians Mike Dougherty and Ray Woodruff (yes sir, that’s my hubby!)

Mike Dougherty is a guitarist/composer in the Washington, D.C. area who specializes in acoustic steel-string fingerpicking music. His original guitar compositions incorporate many different strains of American music: blues, folk, country, ragtime, jazz, rock, and gospel. Syncopated rhythms, melodic content, texture, and space are also present. In addition, there is a sense of simplicity, emotion, and humor.

Ray Woodruff is an eclectic acoustic folk musician who likes to steal the shiny bits from various musical styles and use them to build on a foundation of country blues and the traditional music of the British Isles. Combining unique, lyrical and improvisational guitar work with a literate blend of historical and contemporary lyrical settings, he creates rambling, striving, searching stories that focus on sudden moments and single lives.

I don’t care what time of year you drink your beers. Want a barleywine in the summer? Wheat beer in the cold? Fine. What I hate, though, is when breweries start pushing their seasonals out of season. You can now find spring seasonal beers in many stores, and it’s the middle of February. That’s ridiculous. I’m not naming names because they know who they are. I know why they do it: money. They want to get ahead of everybody else to get consumers excited about a new beer on the shelf. Meanwhile they defeat the whole purpose of having seasonal beer in the first place. Beer drinkers, help me out and refuse to buy newly released beer out of season if the beer specifically markets itself as a spring/summer/whatever beer. You will never see a seasonal beer show up at kybecca early. A few breweries that commendably do not pull this trick are Fredericksburg’s own Blue & Gray, Dogfish Head, Bell’s, and Troegs.

Now on to the new stuff. Do you like Hops? Do you like Belgian Ales? I think you know where I’m going with this. Green Flash brewery in San Diego has released Le Freak, which they bill as a combination of an Imperial Pale Ale and a Belgian-style Triple. I haven’t tried it yet but it sounds intriguing.

Next, a new brand in Virginia! RJ Rockers beers are from South Carolina. We just brought in their Patriot Pale Ale and the Bell Ringer Strong Ale. Comes in the bottle and in 6 packs. They are good values too: the pale ale is $8.49 per 6 pack and the Bell Ringer is $9.49 per 6 pack.

And finally, making its return this year is Dogfish Head’s Red and White. This beer is modeled on a strong Belgian white ale. The twist is that it is brewed with Pinot Noir juice and part of it is aged in Pinot Noir oak barrels. The result is a beer with subtle wine-like flavors. Really delicious and great with food as well.

Also new Belgian ales, new stuff from Lagunitas, and other stuff I’m sure I’m forgetting.

Often when I’m recommending wines a customer starts by telling me what they don’t like. “I don’t like Chardonnay”, or “I don’t like Merlot”. If you really want to know what you like and what you don’t, this isn’t the way to go about it. For a start, nobody can really make a judgement like “I don’t like Chardonnay” because there are too many of them to rule out before you can say that. But that aside, I have found that when it comes to preferences, where the wine comes from is far more important than what grape variety it’s made out of. A Chardonnay from Chablis can taste completely different than a Chardonnay from Napa, to the point where you wouldn’t believe the two wines were made from the same grape.

Wine making regions tend to have certain things in common, such as soil composition, weather and so on. That means that wines from these regions often share similar characteristics. Chardonnay from Chablis tends to be light with lots of minerality where Chardonnay from Napa is often fuller-bodied, buttery, and with more fruit flavor. I’m generalizing of course, but it’s roughly true, or at least true enough to set your preferences by. This is also a big reason why many European wines identify themselves by where they come from, e.g. Chianti, Bordeaux, Champagne, and so on.

So from now on I advise you to to check the wine label for where a wine is made each time you try a new one and see if a pattern in your preferences emerges. It’s also fun to do wine tastings by getting several wines made from the same grape but different places and compare them. And please, pretty please don’t refuse of a wine because of what country it comes from. Saying “I don’t like French wine” is as ridiculous as saying “I don’t like American wine”.

Do not click this link if you are hungry.

I just got back form the quarterly Town/Gown meeting.Here are some highlights about the University.1) Eagle Village – once known as the Park&ShopYou will see the construction fence go up next week. Rose’s will get demolishedMarch 1st – the first phase…

Lots of people have been asking us what’s going on at the wine bar this Valentine’s Day. We have lots of great things going on. Starting at 8:30, Singer/Songwriter Kyle Davis will be performing. Also, for this one night only we will abandon our ‘no reservations’ policy. Starting tomorrow, Wednesday the 11th, you can phone us at (540) 373-3338 to make a reservation. No groups over 4 people. We also have a special menu prepared:

Red Wine Cheese Plate – A selection of cheeses specially to pair with red wine. Includes Epoisses, Oregonzola Blue, Sweetgrass Thomasville Tomme, and Hudson Valley Camembert

White Wine Cheese Plate – Specially prepared to pair with white wine. Includes Cypress Grove Truffle Tremor Chevre, Fromage d’Affinois, 5 Spoke Tumbleweed Cheddar, and Everona Dairy Marble Sheep’s Milk Cheese.

Citrus Shrimp Ceviche – Shrimp marinated in orange juice, mustard seed and tumeric. We make this one at home every Thanksgiving.

Lolla-Rosa Buttermilk Blue Salad – A collection of red greens and walnuts with our buttermilk blue cheese dressing.

Red Pepper Goat Cheese Salad – Roasted red peppers stuffed with truffled goat cheese, greens, and a citrus vinaigrette.

Mussels in Curry and White Ale – Our newest creation and already a hit. Individual portions of mussels in a sauce made with curry and Floris Belgian White Ale (witbier).

Mac and Cheese – Bowtie pasta with a cheese sauce made from 18 month aged cheddar from New Zealand, with a crust of Panko (Japanese bread crumbs) and Pecorino.

Bison and Blue Cheese Sliders – This one is inspired by our love for steamed burgers you get at some fast food joints, although for this one we take it to the next level. Three sliders made from locally-raised Bison meat, steamed buns, blue cheese, and chopped cornichons (French pickles).

Chocolate Truffles paired with Voulet Casorzo – Our house-made Chocolate Truffles with Voulet Casorzo, a semi-sweet Italian wine that’s always been hugely popular and that we have found to pair very well with chocolate.

Pound Cake Panino paired with Elio Perone Bigaro – A panino made with pound cake, nutella, and strawberries paired with Bigaro, a delicious pink frizzante (semi-sparkling wine). You really must try the Bigaro if you never have – it really is an all new flavor experience.

So there you have it. Sounds good, no? Come join us on Saturday from some great food and, it goes without saying, great wine.

I found this neat website trying to figure out how to pronounce “Gueuze”, the beer style I talked about in a post below. It gives you the Flemish or French pronunciation of major Belgian beer styles and breweries, and you get to hear a voice saying it. Not that I think you have to be that accurate, but it’s still really helpful. Click here to see the website.

A lot of people are coming to my house for the Super Bowl. I don’t really know which teams are playing, I just cook. And you know, try to strike a balance between really yummy heart attack food and really yummy, but let’s face it, less exciting healthy alternatives. But even I was shocked and amused to read about The Bacon Explosion in today’s New York Times.

I am fairly confident in my ability to perform a number of administrative tasks on both Mac and Windows computers. Unfortunately, I may be a bit too confident.Recently, while working to modify the file permissions on a secondary hard drive installed in…

I was contacted this week by someone working with the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation.They are interested in the hearing about the needs and concerns that the local neighborhoodshave regarding ongoing revitalization projects.If I can distill the ess…