Moe's Cuyahoga Falls Features Pride Mountain Merlot

Moe's Cuyahoga Falls Features Pride Mountain Merlot

Pride Mountain Vineyards Merlot 2012

For a casual business dinner, we dined at Moe's Restaurant in Cuyahoga Falls, OH. One side is a quaint tavern setting, adjacent is a trendy white linen tablecloth dining setting, with a shared Monthly Featured Dinner menu.

A short, basic, carefully selected wine list of fifty selections offers a range of price points and wine styles to complement their featured menu. A basic selection of a dozen WBTG - Wines By The Glass, allows for each diner in a group to select an appropriate wine with each dish.

Two of us ordered the Braised Short Ribs with Chipotle orange bbq, cheddar polenta and snap peas, which was delicious, and was much better than it sounds. Our other diners ordered the NY Strip Steak and the Grilled Salmon entrees. All our dinners were excellent.

For the second time this week, the wine list offered one of the few wines that straddle the summit county line between Napa and Sonoma Counties, high atop the Mayacamas Mountain range that separates the two valleys, Napa to the east and Sonoma to the west.

Pride Mountain Vineyards, originally named 'Summit Ranch', befitting its location , is a 235-acre estate with eighty acres of vineyards. Beside the winery building, the crush pad features a brick inlay that marks the Napa/Sonoma County line.

We've collected this wine since the early 90's and still hold in our cellar the 1997 vintage which we tasted and acquired during our Estate visit back in 1999. The 1997 vintage was the first year estate production occurred in the new modern winery built by the Pride family.

Even in its youth, this young wine provides early gratification with very tasty, pleasant drinking. It presents itself like a full bore Napa Cab, but is smooth, balanced and approachable, akin the character of a softer smoother Merlot.


This was bright garnet colored, medium full bodied, nicely balanced full forward black raspberry, black cherry fruits accented by hints of mocha, cedar, spicy oak with full, round smooth supple tannins on a harmonious finish.

RM 91 points.

The 2012 Merlot is composed of 92% Merlot and 8% Cabernet Sauvignon.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=1862139

http://www.pridewines.com/

http://www.moesrestaurant.com/

Rosewood Grill and UNITY Red Blend

Rosewood Grill and UNITY Red Blend

For a business dinner with colleagues on the road, we dined at Rosewood Grill in Hudson, OH. With our grilled beef steak entrees we ordered Fisher Vineyards 'UNITY' Napa/Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon from their Wine Spectator Award winning wine list.

The Fisher Family have been growing and producing wines in both Napa Valley and Sonoma County since 1973.

UNITY is the brand associated with the second generation of the Fisher Family working together - Fisher founders Fred and Juelle Fisher, and the second generation that includes three siblings Whitney, Robert and Cameron.

The first generation Fisher Vineyards embodies single vineyard sourced wines, made unique by their particular, singular environmental conditions including soil and climate - elements when combined known as terrior.

In contrast, UNITY wines are produced from fruit chosen from multiple sites, estates or appellations, blended together in a tapestry where hopefully the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

This 2013 UNITY Cabernet Sauvignon is a blend of fruit sourced 75% from Napa Valley and 25% from Sonoma County from sites in Calistoga, Northern Napa Valley Floor, the Mayacamas Mountains, Eastern Sonoma County, Napa Valley Atlas Peak, and the Vacas Mountains of Eastern Napa.

They blend consists of 76% Cabernet Sauvignon, 12% Malbec, 7% Merlot, 4% Cabernet Franc, and 1% Petite Verdot.

It appears the complexity of the blend of this wine will require more aging time to come together. At this early stage it is still disjointed and awkward with some funky non-fruit musty wet wood barnyard tones punctuated by notes of creosote and hints of cedar and earthy leather offsetting the fruit flavors, before starting to burn off after about an hour to reveal black berry fruits and anise - too young or too little decanting preparation time in a restaurant dinner setting.

RM 86 points.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=2029815

http://www.fishervineyards.com/unitywine/

http://rosewoodgrill.com/hudson/Default.aspx