I love birthdays, especially mine. I would celebrate at least twice a year if I could. Now I’ve decided to turn our birthday celebrations to a birthday weekend fete. My birthday was officially Sunday, but started the party on Friday with a lunch with friends. Saturday Mitch and I went to a very nice restaurant for dinner. Mitch had the 14 oz Wagyu Strip Steak medium rare (which is the American version of the Japanese Kobe beef) and brought over half home, and I had the 12 oz bone in filet rare of course and brought a large portion of it home too. Both steaks were very tender and cooked to perfection.

To go with the steaks I ordered a bottle of Starmont, 2011, a Napa County, California Cabernet Sauvignon to go with the steaks. The restaurant bottle price was $50, which means it probably is sold for around $25 or $30 a bottle. The wine was very nice, worth the extra money. It was a dark red color in the glass and when I stuck my nose in glass I could smell tobacco, leather and a bit of smokiness. I could taste dark fruit in the first taste as I swirled it around in my mouth. The wine was dry and smooth, not at all harsh. The wine had a wonderful full finish that slid down my throat without any bite. It had 13.5% alcohol but I didn’t smell the alcohol first thing like I have with some of the cheaper wines. The wine was so good and drinkable that we didn’t realize how fast we emptied the bottle.

For dessert, we shared a triple chocolate mousse cake. It was a three layer cake with the bottom layer made of semi-sweet chocolate, the next layer was milk chocolate and the top layer was white chocolate. Very yummy. To help the cake go down I had a glass of Taylors Fladgate 20 year old tawny port. The port was nice with a toffee taste. The Taylors was not quite as good as the Grahams 20 year old port I’d tasted a few weeks ago, but still a nice port.

All in all my birthday dinner was special and now I have another bottle of wine to add to my “buy” list.