Simplifying Wine!

So we had another great wine tasting last weekend, and we tried 6 new wines and had a lot of fun.  I have been doing a lot of tastings lately and one of the greatest accomplishments I get from a wine tasting is simplifying wine a little bit.  Wine can be a complex topic, there are so many different kinds of wine, grapes, wine-making styles from so many countries, it’s no surprise people can be a little intimidated buying wine.  One of my main goals in a wine tasting is to help take some of the mystery out of buying wine and to help simplify it for people.

There’s no better way to do that than to get a great group of people together and try some new wines.  New wines tends to bring out lits of questions, and we like that, because the more we know, the easier buying wine gets.  And that’s what we did last weekend.  Here is an example of a pairing we did from 2 Pinot Noir Wines from France.  One was twice the price of the other, and the group was split down the middle as to which one they liked the best.

I love this wine.  Le Fou means ‘Madman’, and the owner decided to call it that, because his neighbours thought he was crazy for planting Pinot Noir in the south of France, known for its Syrah and Grenache.  I think this wine is tremendous value as it comes in just under $17 a bottle here in Nova Scotia, but it’s medium-bodied with lots of flavor.  There are some pepper notes accompanied by tart cherry and a very food friendly wine at a price you can open any night of the week.

We tasted the Le Fou side by side with this wine, a Pinot Noir from the Burgundy region of France.  It’s a popular opinion that the Burgundy region of France provides some of the greatest Pinot Noir wines in the world, especially from the Cote de Nuits region of Burgundy, where this wine originates from.  The 2015 vintage is considered exceptional because of things like weather conditions and grape maturity.  I found this to be a delicious and well structured wine with spicy notes.  Although this wine was closer to the $30 range, I found it tasty and a great treat wine.

And now my wine of the week… a great find from Italy

This was the last wine of the evening, and probably the biggest hit of the evening.  Definitely a wine I will be showcasing in other wine tastings.  Montepulciano is a region in Tuscany, but it’s also a grape.  And that’s the case in this wine, it’s the grape Montepulciano from the Abruzzo region, thus the name Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.  This wine is fairly new to our local liquor store and I just loved it!  It was rich and full-bodied and extremely smooth to drink.  I love that their goal is quality from cluster to glass.  And at $22.99, I will definitely be buying this wine again.  As a matter of fact, I am invited to party this evening where there will be pizza on the menu and I think I may bring this wine.

Well, that’s it for this week

Have a great weekend everyone.  Till next week, Cheers

Darlene