Wine review: Anne Amie Cuvee A Amrita 2011

This post was going to be a wine of the week for a different wine from Oregon’s Anne Amie – the muller-thurgau, one of my all-time favorites. But bizarre fog last year did something to the grapes, and rather than make a crappy wine, Anne Amie winemaker Thomas Houseman decided not to make it at all. How often do I get to write that?

So we’ll have to settle for the Amrita ($15, sample), a white blend that is a fine wine in its own right. It's mostly chardonnay and riesling (plus eight other grapes for good measure), and is fresh and lively and without the stilted, heavy fake oak that so many wines at this price use to compensate for poor quality fruit, to cover up a winemaking flaw, or to add oak flavor because they think it makes a more popular wine.

The Amrita, like the muller-thurgau, is a food wine with enough sweetness to pair with spicy food (look for a little citrus and apricot fruit), but not enough to offend people who think sweet wine means white zinfandel. In this, it would be a huge hit at Thanksgiving, what with turkey and cornbread dressing.