Monday is Canada Day and who doesn’t love a long weekend in the Summer. This girl does. I had another great wine tasting with a great group of people last weekend. We not only had a few laughs, we had some amazing food and we tried a couple of really great wines.
We enjoyed a total of 7 wines last weekend, we opened with a sparkling, had 2 more white wines and finished off with 4 red wines.
The opening sparkling wine was the first one I wanted to talk to you about
This is a exceptional sparkling wine, it’s the Benjamin Bridge Non-Vintage Brut which originates right here in Nova Scotia. Non-vintage means the grapes doesn’t necessarily come from the same vintage year, as a matter of fact, winemaker Jean-Benoit Deslausiers uses grapes from up to 13 vintage years. It’s a spectacular sparkling wine, everybody enjoyed it, with no bitterness just a refreshing effervescence.
We tried to more white wines after the sparkling, one was enjoyed by some the other was enjoyed by no one, LOL! I don’t normally talk about wines that I don’t like, just because I don’t like them doesn’t mean other people won’t. And apparently when this was poured for a food tasting event at a previous occasion everybody loved it. At this party not so much.
The Bukettraube grape is also called Bouquet Blanc, and it is very aromatic. Originating from Germany, this group is only grown in Germany France and South Africa. I found it it had similarities to Gewurztraminer, which is another grape you’ll either love it or you’ll hate it.
The other white wine we had that evening was the Morgan cellars Chardonnay from California. Personally I loved it because I didn’t find it overly oaky, but the crowd was definitely split on this one. I live in Nova Scotia, originally from Newfoundland, and this wine would be perfect for things like lobster and other seafood favourites. I loved the fact that only 33% of this wine sees French oak, so the oak is subtle not overpowering. I also found the acidity really nice for a Chardonnay, it was smooth and easy to drink with notes of citrus and it’s under $18.
My wine of the week this week……
The red wines we enjoyed included some favourites I’ve written about before. The 3-finger Jack Zinfandel was my wine of the week a couple of weeks ago, Labaume Syrah from France is so good I have about four bottles of it in my wine rack right now.
The San Fabiano Chianti Classico from Italy. There are nine Chianti regions in Italy, only one of them designated Classico which is evident on the bottle by the picture of the black rooster.
Chianti is a very dry red wine from Italy, but I think it’s a super wine for food including food from the region which includes pasta and pizza. A Chianti wine can cut through those tomato sauces and bring out the flavour of both the food and the wine. This is a bit of a treat at $27 a bottle, but a great Italian red wine.
Have a great long weekend, till next week
Cheers
Darlene
Wine-It’s Just My Opinion 