The heat is on and it’s only the first of June. It’s the Pacific Northwest for crying out loud, everyone told me it rains all the time, it’s cold and cloudy, everyone is depressed because of the rain. Well right now I’m depressed because of the heat and no rain. We haven’t had any good rainy, cool, cloudy days for a long time. We’ve been hotter and drier here than in the Midwest where I came from. So in order to dampen my “depression”, I drink more wine.

For dinner I grilled a large ribeye steak to split between us and opened a California Cabernet Sauvignon from Benziger Family Winery. The wine came from Sonoma County, vintage 2013. The wine was a dark red purple in the glass and had a blackberry jammie smell when I stuck my nose in the glass. The wine had a dark cherry taste full of fruit, smooth and supple. The wine was dry with a smoky wood finish. It had an alcohol content of 13.5% and cost $18 a bottle.

You can find Benziger online at http://www.benziger.com. I’ve had their Zinfandel a long time ago and was very pleased with it, so when I ran across a bottle of their Cabernet Sauvignon I wanted to try it too, just to see if the Cab was as good as the Zin. I was not disappointed, the Cab was every bit as good as the Zin, just different. This is definitely a wine to rebuy.