Saturday, January 28, 2012

Does a Post on Wine Get Me Kicked Out of the Club?

My dad and I made a trip out to Hunter Valley today. It's a few hour drive from Sydney and if you're a wine drinker, it is certainly worth the drive. I've never been to Napa Valley but it is what I would imagine Napa Valley is; you drive 100 feet and you end up at the next vineyard. We had 3 wine tastings on the trip (someone else was driving). The first stop was at Brokenwood. We tried a couple different semillons, which were very light in flavor and a little acidic. Both are great for a hot summer day and pair well with seafood. We also tried a chardonnay stored in Australian(?) Oak as opposed to American Oak. The flavor of the oak was much less pronounced; something I found to benefit the wine. We went through a couple reds that were honestly forgettable and finished with a port. The port was fantastic. Unfortunately, you can't purchase this port in the US and I'm not about to lug a bottle of wine around with me on vacation. It had a great sweet flavor to it. Almost too sweet, but not. It'd be perfect to finish dinner. The next tasting we had was with lunch. I can't remember the vineyard and no one really spoke to us about the wines. Straight up forgettable. Moving on…. We then went to Oakvale. I enjoyed a couple wines this vineyard served. There was a semillon sauvignon blanc (mixture of the semillon and sauvignon blanc) that gave a bit more body to the semillon without adding too much of a different flavor. I would buy a bottle of this wine. There was also a chambourcin that was made of the chambourcin grapes. Apparently, these particular grapes press with such a red color that the wine doesn't have to be fermented with the skin and seeds. This means there are less tannins in the resulting product…less pucker and less headache. I enjoyed the flavor of the wine in general so I think I would try this guy again given the opportunity. The last wine that we tried was a muscat. It was quite similar to the port in that it was very sweet and a great after dinner wine. I think I enjoyed this more than the port though because there were notes of raisins in this wine that were quite prevalent. You got the taste of fruit cake, which you may think is gross but isn't so bad when you're drinking this wine. I will likely order some wines from the Brokenwood vineyard as they have a distributor in the US and the order process seems to be pretty straight forward. Let me know if you'd be interested in getting in on my order.
Cheers,
Tim

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