Tasting - Butterfly Kiss Moscato

Name: Butterfly Kiss Moscato
Variety: Moscato (Muscat Blanc)
Region:Central Valley
Country: Chile
Year: 2012
Price: $13 (on sale for $5.95)

Winery Review:
Lovely and bright, our 2012 Moscato dances with aromas of honeydew and apricot, gently kissed by orange blossom, candied pineapple and hint of lime zest. The palate is silky and lush, combining rich stone fruit and fresh melon flavors lifted by a vibrant zing of lemon-lime, which extends across the mouthwatering finish.

My Review: Since I generally love Moscato, I had high hopes for this wine! The color was a light pink/peach color. The smell was a fruity grapefruit and to be honest, it kind of smelled like chap stick to me. Kiwi was also a smell the lingered on your nose. When tasting it, I tasted a sweet, light fruit, but not overwhelmingly fruity. This wine was both extremely sweet and light, and I tasted no heat at the beginning or end of the wine. 

Tasting - Purple Paws Zinfandel

Name: Purple Paws Zinfandel
Variety: Zinfandel
Region: Lodi, California
Country: USA
Year: 2012
Price: $15 (on sale for $7.95)

Winery Review:
Our 2012 Lodi Zinfdandel exhibits hints of cherry on the front of your palate and vanilla on the finish that will have you begging for more. Like most zinfandels it pairs well with good friends and barbecue.

My Review: The color of this wine was more of a blood red that wasn't transparent, showing us that this wine had a higher complexity. The aroma seemed to be a strange new mix of leather, ginger and cranberry. The cranberry smell led me to believe that there would be a fruity flavor but the fruit was minimal in the flavor, but still present. I cannot specifically state what other flavors were in the wine because the wine was so smooth. It just flowed and so the fruity flavor was general. The heat of this wine was at the end, but because of the smoothness of the wine, the heat was minimal and very tolerable. 

Tasting - Purple Paws Cabernet Sauvignon

Name: Purple Pays Cabernet Sauvignon
Variety: Cabernet Sauvignon Non Vintage
Region: Lodi, California
Country: USA
Year: N/A (Since this wine is a mix of wines)
Price $15 (on sale for $7.95)

Winery Review:
Our 2012 Lodi Cabernet has all the classic notes of a California Cabernet Sauvignon. Cloves, olives, and oak with a no nonsense, fruit forward finish remind you why this, the heaviest wine in the Purple Paws line, lends itself to pairings of robust steaks or lamb.

My Review: The color of this wine can be best described as being a light garnet colored wine. The color wasn't dark enough that you couldn't see through it, but it definitely had a dark coloring. The smell was an interesting mix of pomegranate but also it smelled as if it were burnt. When tasted, the taste was extremely bitter, burnt, and overall tart. The tart flavor seemed to come at the end when the burnt flavor was leaving your mouth. This wine also did not have a lot of dark legs.

Tasting - Rosemount Chardonnay

Name: Rosemount Chardonnay 
Variety: Chardonnay
Region: South Australia
Country: Australia 
Year: 2013
Price: $10 (on sale for $5.95)

Rosemount EstateTasting Review:
Vibrantly aromatic, with mouth watering stone fruit flavours and lemon zest. A refreshing and crisp style of Chardonnay, with just a hint of creamy toasted almonds.

My Review: The color of this wine had a more golden color then a clear color. The aroma seemed to consist of mostly melon and apple. The smell of the wine wasn't super fruity, or full of heat, so it was a more diluted, pleasant aroma. When you drank this wine, I definitely tasted some oak aftertaste. Again the fruity tones that I tasted were melon in generally, I wasn't able to distinguish any other different types of flavors. The heat of the this wine was strong and was located at the beginning of the sip, not the end. 

Tasting - La Lejania Sauvignon Blanc

Name: La Lejania
Variety: Sauvignon Blanc
Region: Central Valley
Country: Chile
Year: 2015
Price: $6.75

Winery Review: Aromas of green apple and citrus are as classic as it gets for Chilean Sauvignon Blanc. This is straight forward but enjoyable, with modest minerality. Flavors of citrus and gooseberry carry over onto a refreshing finish.

My Review: At first glance, this is wine has a very light color, mostly extremely pale golden yellow tones stick out. When you smell the wine, I smelt citrus fruits, lime, apple, and grapefruit undertones. I didn't seem to smell any earthy tones. After tasting the wine, it was very fruity and the flavors of citrus and raspberry seemed to stay on my tongue. There was definitely a grapefruit after taste like I had previously smelled. This wine also had a lot of heat at the beginning which was kind of hard to get past.

First Blog Assignment

To be completely honest, my personal experience with wine so far includes going to Kroger and buying cheap rose/white wine for Monday night when the Bachelor is on. When I am feeling crazy, I pick a clever label. That being said, I have gone to two wineries this past semester and am very curious to learn more! I never drank before I was 21, and my mom always liked white wine, so when I starting drinking wine I was definitely partial to whites and sweet wines - the more bubbly the better. I like the cool, crisp wine, and tend to shy away from the darker colors. I seem to enjoy red wine with heavy food, like pastas and meats, but I never really go out of my way to choose wines of this variety. Unlike what the syllabus says, I don't usually buy wine to consume with food, instead I buy wine that I can consume by itself, and that's probably the ultimate reason why I lean towards sweet instead of bitter tastes. One thing I do have going for me is that I am a slow wine drinker. I enjoy the slow taste and am not a "pounder" of wine per say.
When I graduated high school I got the opportunity to travel to Europe for a month with my Grandmother. We spent a little under a week in Italy and I got to taste a lot of different flavors. When we would go to dinners, it also put into perspective that wine was meant to be eaten with certain foods. Every different course usually had a different wine pairing, and dessert wine to me always seemed more bitter than I expected. I was 18 at the time and had not developed a taste for wine, so while I tried it a few times, I stuck more to the carbonated water. Now, being older, I am more curious of the thought behind what wines were paired with what. And going into this course, that is a huge piece of what I hope to get out this. I really want to be educated on what wine to serve when, and the reasons behind it - instead of making a random guess or sticking to the wines that I usually like. I want to learn to enjoy wine with food and use wine to bring out different flavors in food - because honestly that's what seems to happen on TV.
Since my usual reach for wine is all white/rose, my final goal for this semester is to find some red wines that I really enjoy. Maybe a dessert wine, or maybe just something that relatively tastes good with all dinner meals. My aim isn't to particularly develop a taste for red wine, but to understand it and be able to name a few that I like. I would also like to refine my white wine pallet. I want to be able to pick up on different undertones that before I would have never noticed or appreciated. Although I will still drink wine for Bachelor nights, drinking wine with different food seems to be a big part of the course and I am excited to learn more about this and see wine from a different angle.