Weekend Wine Reviews

I am going to try and review the wines that my wife and I drink on the weekends. This is my first shot at wine reviews, so bear with me. Just from this weekend, I have already learned that it is not always easy to find the right words to describe wine. In fact, my wife and I often noted totally different aromas and flavors for the same wine. So I'm not sure how useful wine reviews really are. In fact, I don't think that I have ever been influenced to buy or not buy wine by a wine review. Everybody has different tastes and it is often difficult to convey a specific wine tasting experience. Also, there are many internal and external factors that may influence the wine tasting and the aromas, flavors, and textures that one experiences; such as temperature of the wine and the room, other smells in the room, the health of the taster (colds or sinus problems), previous foods and drinks tasted, etc. All that being said, here goes. As I said previously, my taste in wines varies from semi-dry to sweet, and I mostly drink whites because of my Acid reflux problem. And I usually break all the Rules of Wine. So if you are here to read the refined musings of a highly trained wine connoisseur, you are at the wrong place. My wife and I buy wines that taste good to us, and can be bought at a good price (to us, that is less than $15). The wines that we drank this weekend were all on the sweet side. Most of the time we just randomly select from what is down in our wine rack. The first wine was "Just Peachy" from Swedish Hill (western side of Cayuga Lake) http://www.swedishhill.com The price is $8.99. My wife had already been imbibing when I arrived home from work on friday. I guess with the autumn weather, she was feeling in a peachy mood. The bottle describes it as a Finger Lakes Table wine with natural Flavors added (I assume Peach). The color is a beautiful deep amber-gold. It has an amazing Peach aroma. The wine has the expected sweet start (with 11% Residual sugar) on the tongue, but not overwhelmingly sweet (at least, not in my opinion). Midway is the fresh peach flavor lingering into a slightly spicy/bitter (but not in a bad way) finish hinting of peach pit. Most would probably have this as a dessert wine, but not us. We, of course, broke all the rules and had it with Steak and Caramelized Onions. All in all, a fine get home from work, take the edge off, and drink with steak dinner wine. Oh, are the wine purists going to be mad at me. Well, I'm sorry. This is how average people drink wine. We don't think about how the acidity or sugars are going to clash with the meat. We've worked all day, we are tired, and we just don't want to think that hard about the wine. On to the next wine of the weekend. It was "Diamond" from Barrington Cellars (eastern side of Keuka lake) http://www.barringtoncellars.com The price is $7.69. From the website description, it is a semi-sweet table wine (definition of table wine from answers.com- An unfortified wine with less than 14% alcohol that is suitable to be served with a meal) with Lambrusca flavors with 6% Residual sugar and 12% alcohol. The color is almost clear, perhaps very pale straw. The wine had a clean fresh aroma, of honeydew or melon (my opinion) or of light grape (wife's opinion). It had a honeysuckle/honeydew(my opinion), light grape/pear (wifes opinion) beginning with a clean, earthy/airy midpoint on to a medium bitiness or tartness of green apple at the end. Overall, very balanced, smooth and light. We also had a Wagner Cayuga White at a birthday party at my sisters over the weekend. My quick impressions were that it was very unique for a Cayuga. Most Cayuga's I have tasted are usually very grapey, but this one had a spicey finish. Not bad at all, just different, in my opinion, for a Cayuga. So there it is, my first wine reviews. I think that doing these reviews is going to force me to be more aware of the details of the aromas and tastes of the wines as I am drinking them. And that's a good thing, because I think I will learn a lot in the process. As for whether the reviews provide any benefit to you the reader, I hope they do and I hope you will give me your comments and suggestions. Thanks for reading. Also, I am starting to post links on the right side of the page that I believe offer good information on the Finger Lakes and wine in general. In my next post, I will write about some of my favorite somewhat unique Finger Lakes wineries and attractions that offer a unique experience to the visitor.