Now, it depends how much time I feel like cooking this week, but I hope to at least include some, if not all of the 8 highlighted ingredients in this year’s Eat Drink Local Week. First to check off the list: Rose Wine. Now, you might not know me that well, but I can promise wine is never something I can’t include in my diet. My husband and I have our own Brooklyn “wine cellar”, which is really a section of our walk in pantry closet and an excel document to organize it all. Yeah, I know, we’re kind of nerds. We try to visit NY state wineries a few times a year, especially the North Fork, since it’s so close. It go to the point that we’d bring home so much wine, that we weren’t able to keep track of what was good and what was really good. We’d have take out on a weekday night, pop open a bottle and comment how good it was, before realizing it was a more expensive bottle that we really should have saved for a few years. Thus, our wine archive was born. It’s also helpful in reminding us what wines we REALLY liked and ones that were so so for future trips.

Now I’ve only been going to the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket for a few weeks now (formerly an avid Fort Greene Greenmarket shopper), and was excited to learn Castello di Borghese visits every other Saturday. Perfect for finding a new local rose! Borghese is the North Fork’s oldest winery. I’m a big fan of their Cabernet Franc and Merlot wines, but have never really tried their roses. The one that caught my eye was a 2009 Pinot Noir Rose. Just as promised, it was rich and spicy and held up well for my steak dinner that night. The saleswoman mentioned since it was pure Pinot Noir grapes, it could easily be as delicious served room temperature in the winter or chilled and crisp in the summer. I will certainly become a regular of Borghese’s stand! One local ingredient down, 7 more to go!