The Gourmez

Arrow Creek 2009 Pinot Noir California It’s on the browner side of red for a wine, mudlike in color. I smell rhubarb, plum, and tobacco, and the plum sticks with me when sipping. It or some other stonefruit is prominent. There are a lot of tannins, and the wine tastes dark with coffee and tobacco [...]

Southern Roast Coffee Company 110 Oysterville Drive Holly Springs Website Espresso drinks: $1.60 to $4.45 Coffee: $1.50 to $2.00 Monday through Saturday: 6 to 6 Sunday: 7:30 to 4:00 This small coffee shop is just off of Main Street, the main strip that runs through Holly Springs. You might miss it if you blink; it’s [...]

For this week’s Six Sentence Sunday, I’m sharing the very first six lines from my work-in-progess, an epic fantasy novel. I’ll be spending all of August working hard on this book–I’m really hoping I finish it this year. Feedback on if this first paragraph grabs your interest is definitely welcome. He was an enticing prospect, [...]

The Meat House 1508 E. Franklin Street Chapel Hill Website Donna Coon, who owns the recently opened Meat House in Chapel Hill with her husband, Paul, took me on a tour of the facility a couple of weeks ago. I was excited to try out this chain butchery because they’ve opened three shops in the [...]

Sweet Peach Mead Starrlight Meadery The color of this mead is gorgeous—no, it’s not peach, but more of a gold with a pink hue to it. I could stare at it for hours. Okay, that’s a lie; I could never refrain from drinking a poured glass for that long. It smells first of honey and [...]

Bolla Soave DOC 2009 Veneto, Italy This is my first experience with wines from the Soave region of Italy.  Plenty of smells rise from the glass: lemon, peach, and vanilla. The peach is prominent when drinking the wine, and it lends a great flavor overall. It’s a buttery white but not nearly as much so [...]

Aviator Smokehouse 525 East Broad Street Fuquay-Varina Website $6.95–$13.95   The Aviator Smokehouse in downtown Fuquay-Varina is an offshoot of the Aviator Brewing Company, which is a favorite of plenty of Triangle-area beer drinkers. That beer connection carries over to their menu. The first thing I noticed under the list of sides was a proclamation [...]

Time for another Six Sentence Sunday post–it’s been great fun participating and getting your feedback on such short snippets! Here’s another one from my romance novella, Maya’s Vacation. “Where are we going?” she asked after a few minutes of silent walking. She stopped to catch her breath, not knowing if the pace, the wine, or [...]

Mole-Mole bu·ku, Downtown Raleigh This thick cocktail should be listed as a dessert. With both chocolate vodka and crème de cacao in the ingredient list, it’s awfully close to drinking a Mexican hot chocolate in cold cocktail form. The Navan, which is a vanilla cognac as I just learned, is very subtle in the mixture. [...]

Tempra Tantrum 2009 Bodegas, Spain This wine with a moderately amusing name is a tempranillo and cabernet sauvignon blend. You’d think they’d go all tempranillo with the name, but trust me—they did well with the blend. They also sell a tempranillo and shiraz blend under the same name, just in case you get confused! The [...]