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/).