Wine Tasting 4/13

 

 Name of Wine: Barefoot Red Moscato

Varietal: Muscat

Region: Modesto, California

Country: USA

Year: 2014

Price: about $7

Online Wine Review: https://www.influenster.com/reviews/barefoot-red-moscato 

Review:

        Smell- I know I labeled this smell, but like I started the rest of my blogs I want to first describe my first impression of the wine. I first observed its color and I would describe it as a pale ruby based on the Wine Folly wine color chart(https://winefolly.com/deep-dive/complete-wine-color-chart/) which is usually the appearance associated with pinot noir. Now, when it came to the smell, it smelled delicious. It smelled like berry fruits, specifically raspberry, cherry, and strawberry.

 

        By Itself (6/10)- So I had this wine when I went home, so I just found the cheapest wine I could find in my mom's little wine cellar/collection thing and ask if I could drink it. She doesn't drink that often, so this wine was pretty old and could possible have been kind of expired I'm not totally sure. So when I drank it I didn't think it was too bad, I definitely got hints of cherry and raspberry, but it also tasted a little off, which is why I thought it could be expired. It was also very sweet, which I like but like I previously stated it tasted a little off which is why I'm giving it a 6 out of 10 rating.

Wine Tasting 4/12

 

 Name of Wine: Fleurs de Prairie

Varietal: Rose

Region: Languedoc

Country: France

Year: 2022

Price: about $15

Online Wine Review: https://thecheekyvino.com/fleurs-de-prairie-rose-is-almost-too-pretty-to-drink/#:~:text=The%20Fleurs%20de%20Prairie%20Ros%C3%A9%20has%20a%20beautiful%20salmon%20colour,the%20wine%20is%20super%20refreshing. 

Review:

        Smell- My first impression of this wine is that its a light salmon color. When looking at the Wine Folly wine color chart (https://winefolly.com/deep-dive/complete-wine-color-chart/), I believe it looked most like the pale salmon, which is usually the color of Provence rose and zinfandel. And believe it our not this is a Provence rose, which means the color chart is pretty accurate. Ok, onto the smelling, when I smelled this wine it got hints of berry fruit, citrus fruit, and floral aromas. More specifically notes of strawberry, grapefruit, and rose flower.

        

        With food (1/10)- So if I'm being honest I knew this was going to taste bad with the food I was eating, but I was at a get together and the wine was brought after we had already eaten a bunch of sweets. See what I'm getting at, I knew from this class that this wine was an Old World style rose which tends to be a dry wine, vs a New World rose that tends to be a sweet wine. So when I tried this wine after eating a lot of sugary food, it tasted absolutely awful. It was so dry and so so sour, it had the overwhelming flavor of grapefruit, but to be honest it was very hard to taste because it paired so bad with the food. I believe the wine by itself or paired with other foods could be fantastic which is why its hard for me to give this wine such a bad review.

Wine Tasting 2/18

 

 

Name of Wine: St. James Winery-Pineapple Mango

Varietal: Pineapple and Mango

Region: St. James, Missouri

Country: USA

Year: Not labeled

Price: $8.99

Online Wine Review: I couldn't find any critic reviews online, maybe due to the fact that this is a seasonal wine.

Review:

        Smell- Based on my initial observation of the color, a deep gold, I thought it looked similar to a chardonnay or aged white rioja (https://winefolly.com/deep-dive/complete-wine-color-chart/). When I smelled this wine for the first time it smelled very fruity. Its weird because this is a pineapple mango wine but it smelled very similar to white wine. It definitely has a tropical fruity smell, I can smell a hint of the pineapple, but I can't really smell the mango.

        By itself (7/10)- This wine tasted very similar to the Stella Rosa I tried earlier this week. It was sweet but not overly sweet. It tasted fruity, tropical fruity specifically. I can taste the pineapple for sure, and I am even getting a hint of the mango.

        With food (4/10)- As this wine tasted very similar to a sweet white wine, I decided to pair it with spicy food. I tried it with my fine dining consisting of mini corn dogs with ghost pepper ketchup. Bad idea. It had an overwhelming alcohol/acidic taste. I should've learned from my last tasting that maybe sweet wines with spicy food isn't my thing. I ended up cleansing my pallet with some raspberry black tea and that tasted really good with the food. So maybe the tannins in the black tea was a good thing, and therefore maybe this meal would've been good with a red wine. Now that I'm really thinking about it, corn dogs are pretty fatty foods, and red wines are supposed to go well with fatty food, so maybe red wine was the way to go. This is making me want to venture into red wines so I guess this is a good thing, I was definitely trying to play it safe as a beginner wine drinker/taster and sticking to the sweet white wines.

Wine Tasting: 2/16

    
Name of Wine: Stella Rosa-Tropical Mango

Varietal: Moscato

Region: Piedmont

Country: Italy

Year: Not labeled

Price: $11.99

Online Wine Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoxqDWHMNRE

Review:

        Smell- With the initial sniff of this wine, It smelled incredibly fruity. It had an overwhelming smell of just grapes with just a hint of maybe apple. It smelled citrusy, but I personally didn't smell any mango.

        By itself (7/10)- The first thing that hit me when tasting this wine was the sweetness. This is definitely a sweet wine, and it is also a little bold. This might just be because I'm new to wine and wine tasting, but this wine pretty much taste fully like grapes. This wine was fruity, more specifically tropical, but I didn't get any hints mango I did get hints of passion fruit though. This wine tasted almost exactly like green grape juice I drank when I was younger but less sweet.

        With food (5/10)- On the back of the wine bottle it says "serve chilled with fresh fruit, cheese, spicy cuisine, and deserts" so I decided to try it with my sandwich. This sandwich had paprika chicken, black truffle hot sauce, lettuce, tomato, mayo, and chives. Because the sandwich definitely has some spice to it I thought it would pair well with the wine. I was wrong. I thought that the wine tasted worse with this food than when I tried it alone. When paired with the sandwich the wine's taste became more pronounced but in a bad way. It gave it more of a punch and seemed more acidic. In the future I may look to try and pair wine and food based of their aroma, maybe a red wine with hints of spices and pepper would've paired better with this sandwich (https://winefolly.com/tips/herb-and-spice-pairings-with-wine/).

My personal experience with wine!

     I haven't had much experience with wine, mostly just trying it at wedding and holidays before this class. I usually like sweet wines, but that's all I've really had so far. I'm curious if my taste will change during the course, especially since I haven't explored different types of wines.

    I haven't had many high-quality wines either, so I'm not sure if I'd prefer them over the sweet, lower-quality wines I have tasted in the past. In this class, I want to learn how to tell good wines from bad ones and how to understand the tastes and textures better. Right now, I just think of wine as tasting like grapes.

    I'm also interested in learning how to pair wines with different foods. It seems like a useful skill. And, like the first lecture video mentioned, I want to understand the language of wine and its importance in different cultures. I am very excited for this class and hope to learn a lot.

Here's a picture of me, I'm the one in the white Virginia Tech sweatshirt of course. Go Hokies!