Port of Wines Festival

 

I had the pleasure of attending the annual Port of Wines Festival this past weekend with my good friend Rayell Swan.   What a fantastic festival, and boy, did I taste some fantastic wines.  Too many to write about in one blog, this may take a couple of weeks.  So many great wines, so little time.

 

This is the 2011 Mettler Old Vines Zinfandel, which won best Zinfandel at the show.  Regular readers of this blog know how much I love Zinfandel, and I’m always willing to try a new one.  So much so that I bought this one at the show before trying it.  I did end up sampling the wine, which comes from a 50-year old vineyard located in the ‘epicenter’ of Lodi’s Old Vine Zinfandel district.  Lots of flavor in this one.  Jammy fruits, vanilla and a hint of mocha.  It does have 15.4% alcohol, tread lightly.

  

This is my friend Jeff Pinhey, a great lover of wine here in the Halifax region.  And the bottle of wine he is holding is the 2011 Gerard Bertrand Corbieres.  This wine, in my opinion, was the best wine at the show under $20.  The Wine Advocate gave it 90 Points for a good reason, it’s a great wine at a great price point.  It’s a beautiful blend of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre from the Languedoc-Roussillon area of France, with lots of complex layers  Full bodied, great structure,  spicy and a great wine to go with everything from wild game to pizza to your favorite burger.

Although France was the featured country in this year’s Port of Wines, the festival features wines from all countries.  From Italy, this was one of my favorites.  The 2011 Lucente from Luce vineyards in Tuscanny is a blend of Merlot (75%) and Sangiovese (25%) and they got it right with the blend.  .  Lots of juicy plum flavors, some black cherry, and spice come together for a velvety wine with lots of good structure.  Oh, how this would go so well with pork, as well as charcuterie plates, or even hamburgers.   I’ve always wanted to visit Tuscanny, this makes me want to go there even more!  Great wine.

 

And probably the most famous wine at the show comes from the most famous couple in the world.  The 2013 Jolie-Pitt & Perrin Miraval Cotes de Provence Rose AC.   The Miraval bottling, made in a partnership with the Perrin family of Château de Beaucastel, is a blend of red grapes Cinsault, Grenache and Syrah and white grape Rolle (aka Vermentino).   And it was very very good.  Not just another celebrity wine, this one has won the critics over.  It was dry in a good way, clean and had lovely flavors of strawberry with floral notes.

The reason I am putting this week’s wine blog out early is that tomorrow morning I am running away!  Only for a week though.  Every year my sister and I run away some where together and this year we picked Aruba.  We are gone for 8 days and its a great chance to catch up with the sister who still lives in Newfoundland.   The above picture was taken when we were in Pearl Harbour in Hawaii.

I’m sure there will be a story…..  there always is!

Till I return, Cheers.