by jgnat 28 Replies latest jw friends
Ignore wine snobs like me - you drink what you like. I too started off in the 1970s with German Spatlese and then graduated through drier whites to reds. I still enjoy them all but am a confirmed Cabernet lover.
Please you drink what you like/enjoy but German Spatlese is great quality and medium sweet. Really nice. Sweet wines tend to go really great with desert - and I know most ladies have a sweet tooth. So go for it. (By the way Muscadet is really sweet - wonderful with a nice sweet desert
Part btt, part wine.
Have been into (what I regard as) good wine for longer than I care to think.....There are quire a few sweet reds being produced here by some reputable wineries - I like Brown Bros Dolcetto-Syrah - served cold (yum!!)
h9k
Wow, all that drinking to do, so little time....thank you all! I suspect I will be picking wines by their distinctiveness (woodpeckers, penguins, blue bottles) for some time.
Scully, I'm glucose intolerant. That Canadian Ice would turn me in to a babbling idiot. Thanks for the warning!
I do hope Ozziepost gets a chance to visit this thread.
http://www.blackopalwines.com/blackopal/page/shirazcab.jsp
Had this at dinner tonight! It was really really good!
BB
Scully, I'm glucose intolerant. That Canadian Ice would turn me in to a babbling idiot. Thanks for the warning!
Well, perhaps the sugar is "fructose" as opposed to "glucose", since it is made from fermented grapes... does that make a difference?
I picked up my Giovello Pinot Grigio (it comes in a blue bottle with a dragonfly on the label) today... it's going down quite nicely tonight!
Do the local liquour stores offer sampling of featured wines/liqueurs? I tried Amarula today... just a taste! ... it was quite satisfactory. It is from South Africa, and it is a cream liqueur made from the marula fruit, which is reputed for being a favorite treat of elephants. The legend is that when the ripened fruit falls from the tree it ferments - and the elephants can become intoxicated and fall over from enjoying their treats! Of course, the story has been debunked, but it's a neat story in any case.
I love the legends that come with certain foods and beverages - it makes me enjoy the experience that much more.
I vote that you try the Zinfandel's. Very nice, not too sweet. I've tried the ice wines but they are just too sugary for me. I'm not a Shiraz person....the Zinfandel is a nice, easy, light wine. sammieswife.
Be careful with that stuff Scully. It is smooth and goes down so nice, when you go to stand up you fall over just like the elephants!
BB
G'day all, ozzie's here! Been leading a couple of church services on a very very hot and humid autumn day in Sydney town and now dripping over a hot keyboard!
What a great topic to come home to, thanks jgnat!
Recommending wines is a bit like naming the car of choice - it depends on your personal taste. I used to post a Wine of the Month and some of you may recall that on occaion I'd review a drop I thought was absolute crap! Some that have been mentioned on this thread might fall into that category! Rosé indeed! Pisswater - a can of Coke would have more body!
However (don't you love that dub-ism?!) I think there's something to be said for starting with a lighter bodied wine and here is where merlot comes into its own. At times, especially on hot days, Mrs Ozzie and I select a good merlot. In fact, we were staying in an upmarket hotel just this past week and selected a merlot with our restaurant meal.I think I've posted about one or two merlots in the past. Let me see- yes, here's one: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/48856/1.ashx
Gewurtztraminer was defintely not on our shopping list but just last year whilst on a cruise in the Pacific islands with friends they ordered some and Mrs Ozzie was very 'tickled', "saucy" I think she said. (Nope, not sexy, though!!!)
You might be interested in the variety of wines in this thread from back in April '04: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/69915/1.ashx
Myself?, well we 'started' with a love affair with a cab sav made by a winemaker we correspond with in the Margaret River region of Western Australia, then one day, many years ago, he asked me if he could send me a bottle or two of a private bin shiraz and I was hooked! He's been sending me his many medalled shiraz ever since and a few posters on JWD have received a bottle from me for Xmas at times.
Downunder the best shiraz is considered to come from South Australia but still I just love the Margaret River drop. Since it's private bin, it can't be bought in the liquor stores - sorry!
I was very interested to read Bumble Bee posting about Banrock Station being available in Canada. I have reviewed (and recommended) the Banrock Station shiraz back in July 2002; here's the link: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/31958/1.ashx
So jgnat, you might look for that label - it's cheap (well down here it is!) but it sure isn't nasty.
Bumble Bee also speaks of Rosemount Estates wine which you could try, frankly I'm getting bored with them but if your choice is limited, you won't be disappointed, but please don't buy a blend!.Rosemount's can be very disappointing.
What of sweet wines? Well, they were the choice for Mrs Ozzie for many yeas but she just won't go past a good shiraz these days. Well, sometimes she does, like today with friends, but interestingly even then (with a Vietnamese restaurant) we discarded the white and opened a shiraz.
The upshot of my ramblings is that you might try a merlot during the warmer weather which is coming and then progress to a shiraz as winter approaches. Don't worry so much about "this goes with that" - look, drink a good wine whatever you feel like drinking and hopefully you'll include an Australian shiraz.
Cheers from downunderneath you all,
Ozzie
I love all this wine-talk! I always enjoy shows about wine and cheese and all those people with surperb senses of taste and smell talking about "hints of this" and "sos-and-so notes". Unfortunately, with perpetually blocked sinuses, my olfactory faculties are severely unequipped for trips into the rarified world of fancy, subtle tastes. So I like "sharp" cheeses, and prefer beer to wine. /philistine The other day I did something that I wondered if it would anger the somellier class: I used Wolf Blass Shiraz to make Boeuf Bourguignone, not knowing if it would work. Tasted fine to me, but as I said, I have a hard time differentiating between reds.
LOL @ Steph!
Mrs Ozzie has done much the same thing and then looks incredulously at me when I point out that the wine was for drinking, not saucing!!
