Margie's July Wine Activity Event

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Today we headed out to Irvine to the OC Wine Mart, a tasting room on Michelson in Irvine near the John Wayne Airport.  This tasting room  has a self serve enomatic wine tasting machine. You insert the prepaid card and select which wine you want to taste. It dispenses the wine and deducts the amount from you card. They did have some nice wines. Numerous Orin Swifts wines which I tasted all of them including the Prisoner and Papillon. Nice little wine bar but not geographically friendly unless you are in the area for some reason. Anne the owner was friendly and very helpful.

After tasting we headed back to Huntington Beach to Issara, a Thai restaurant which we had been to before. There were 11 of us for dinner. Margie had pre-selected the menu with the owner David.

Started out with Vegetable Egg Rolls, Chicken Satay and Tom Kha Kai soup which was really good. Then Cripsy Sole, Sizzling Seafood, Panang Beef, Prik Khing (green beans) with Tofu, Pineapple Fried Rice  (1 shrimp in the entire bowl) ,  Pad See Yiu with Beef and white & brown rice. All the food was very good but a few of the dishes were way to "hot" for me. I drank a lot of white wine because of that. Not a wine friendly menu except for white wines. We had Mango Sticky Rice for dessert. I was so full by this time, I passed up the green beans and the dessert. I personally thought that the dishes came out too fast. I prefer a slower pace. Just do not like 4 or 5 items on my plate at a time. I have gotten so used to one dish at a time at the Chinese dinners we do, Better to compare the wine and food dish together. It might have been " family style" but that does not mean everything on the table at once. Food gets mixed together then the wine pairing goes to hell. Food was very good, service was very good. If we do a group dinner here again I hope that the dishes will be paced to come out after the prior dish was finished.

Wine selection was good. All the whites wines seemed to be drank. Reds were left over because of the :hot" food.

2010 R2 Rhapsody, Grenache-Mouverde blend
2009 Effort Chardonnay
2009 Tablas Creek Espirit de beaucastle
2012 Dancing Coyote Chenin Blanc
Segura Viudas Brut Reserve Cava
2010 Penman Springs Syrah Rose
2010 Loring Clos Pepe Pinot Noir
2011 Nobiolo Sauvignon Blanc
2010 Tobin James Ballistic Zinfandel
2011 Tobin James Charo Radiance
2009 Hitching Post First Flight Pinot Noir
2008 Martinelli Charles Ranch Chadonnay
2009 Williams Selyem Flax Vineyards Pinot Noir