Pick-A-Day

April 2010
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Cake and Wine for Koko the Birthday Girl

I spent my final weekend away on this trip visiting Koko and Boy, my two friends who have changed Indiana-no-place into Indianapolis with a nice home overlooking a small lake, a beautiful kitchen, and excellent conversation.

Although her birthday was Thursday, he big celebration was held Friday evening, when I showed up. I brought with me a birthday cake from a new bakery in Bloomington, Angel B’s, and a couple bottles of wine from the Oliver Winery.

Cupcakes $1.50 each

Actually there were apparently four different sweets served to celebrate the birthday, and I sampled all four: some kind of chocolate pizza breadsticks from Pizza Hut, cupcakes from Kroger, my Angel B’s cake, and then another Kroger sheet cake on Saturday. In my humble opinion the cake from Angel B’s was the best—although I forgot to take a personal picture of the actual cake (but you can see one on Koko’s Flickr stream here).

The wine that I bought for Koko’s birthday was a last minute decision as I was driving north—as I approached the Oliver Winery I remembered it existed and thought I would stop to buy some of their wine for Koko. What I remembered about their wines is that all the ones that I’ve ever drunk were sticky sweet and I’ve turned into somebody who likes dry wines—so I wasn’t certain I would be able to drink anything they had for sale.

Once I got past the excessive landscaping and tourists who were taking photos of everything in sight (including the conveniently nearby pasture with two horses), I went inside and was surprised to find that the winery makes a lot of wine—and so I asked for assistance finding two bottles of dry white wines.

Several suggestions were made, but instead of being price sensitive I decided to be geographically sensitive. I rejected any wines that were not made with Indiana grown grapes. This immediately shot the average price per bottle up a substantial amount but something in me has changed over the last few years and I am usually not that thrilled at the idea of transporting food further than necessary.

I ended up with a bottle of Creekbend Pinot Grigio and a bottle of Creekbend Chardonel. I’m not a wine expert, but I had at least heard of Pinot Grigio. Chardonel was a completely new animal for me.

Now that both bottles have been completely vanquished I can report: both Koko and I agree that the Pinot Grigio was nothing special, but the Chardonel was fantastic: Seriously good by our inexperienced tongues. I would highly recommend the Chardonel as it was refreshing and easy to drink.

6 comments to Cake and Wine for Koko the Birthday Girl

  • mateo

    I am one of those people at Oliver Winery who takes pictures of everything in sight, and enjoy the “excessive” landscaping!

    Hope your trip back to Germany is uneventful and safe!

  • Jay

    Chardonel is grown throughout the U.S. midwest. In fact, the U.S. midwest has started producing a lot of good wines. I always buy a few bottles when I visit my mom in St. Louis. Sometime you are back in the states we should go on a drinking tour of Missouri wineries.

  • I’ve never heard of Chardonel. I didn’t know there were any wineries in the midwest. Hmmmm.

  • koko

    Thanks for the wonderful visiting, cake, wine, and happy times 🙂 Love you my little banana hammock!

  • mateo – it was. I’m safe and sound back in Weimar.

    Jay – I don’t know what it is about the Chardonel that I liked but it was excellent. A winery tour sounds great.

    starman1695- What’s scary is that Wyoming has a winery..

    koko – little? 🙂 I look forward to you next birthday!

  • koko

    LOL 😛 I have the greatest friends in the world 🙂 And they come in all sizes 😀