Dreaming of France -- Wine

Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.
Wine is another one of those items we always bring home from France. Our friend Michel usually accompanies Earl to a wine store, a magasin de vin, and they pick out six bottles for us to take home, three in each of our suitcases. Some time in our travels we determined this was the allowable amount and we never declare them, although now I read that we are only allowed one liter of wine per person without paying customs charges of 3%. Oops.
Good wine is so much less expensive in France.
Earlier this year, I was thrilled to find a wine I liked at Trader Joe's. I'm a sweet wine drinker and the Moscato d'Asti was sweet and sparkling and cost about $10 per bottle. That made me happy until our anniversary in June. That's when Earl went to the basement and brought up a bottle of our French wine. It was a dessert wine, so it was sweet too, and so much richer than the Moscato d'Asti.

Here's a comparison between the bottle I
bought this weekend and a regular bottle.

 Later in the week when I tried to go back to the moscato, it tasted like sparkling Kool Aid. I looked at the bottle and realized the alcohol content was only 4.5%. The French anniversary wine had an alcohol content of 13.4%.
This weekend, as I stood in front of the wine section at Trader Joe's, I decided to splurge a little. Earl was leaving for a week-long camping trip, so I picked up a tiny bottle of Sauternes wine for $20.
I also threw in a bouquet of flowers to enjoy this week too, giving myself a little stay-cation.
Grace was home briefly this afternoon and I decided that we should open the wine.
I probably used an entirely wrong kind of wine glass, but I thought these shorter glasses went well with the tiny bottle of wine.

Mmmmmm. It lived up to my expectations.
Sweet and rich, with 14% alcohol, so it didn't remind me of Kool Aid or pop.
I still think the wine is a little expensive, but I suppose it's less expensive than flying to France to buy some more wine. Although I'd prefer, to fly over and pick out my own.