Wine Blogging Wednesday #26

Lenn at Lenndevours started an online community wine tasting session a while back, participation has increased as time goes by. I have always enjoyed reading WBW and I'm geekishly honored to participate. This month's host is Beau at Basic Juice, and his idea is a novel one: instead of naming and then discussing the wine, he asks participants to describe a wine and challenges everyone to guess the origin. Whites may be from New York (I wonder what Lenn will write about...), Oregon, Italy, and reds can hail from Washington, Spain or France.

Here is my entry:

I have been looking for an excuse to taste this wine for almost a year now, but who has the space in their Brooklyn apartment to roast a whole lamb, or the time to hang and roast a pheasant? Those are the things I imagined eating with this wine, hearty and rustic food, and the wine would be served in medieval goblets to be shared at long tables with men in fur vests who eat without cutlery.

Instead, with WBW #26 fast approaching, I walked the bottle over to Deetrane's house, we called Mike to come help us taste, and we opened the bottle with nothing at all to eat. We did use large goblets though, and tried to pepper our conversationwith old fashioned swear words, like maggot and wench. We decided that we had to pour and then leave it alone in the glasses for an hourbefore tasting - its still very young.

This wine was inky purple/black. While pouring, it smelled of plums and the woods (possibly the dreaded Black Forest in Germany). We made it for about a half hour, but then the dunderheaded gnave Deetrane lost his patience, and went for his goblet. We followed suit. Mike is a derivatives trader at a big investment bank, and he collects and has had many an opportunity to experience this style of wine. Deetrane has also explored wines of this style, but I am still essentially a tender virgin in this area. So after not loving my first taste, I was relieved when after sipping they said things like "This wine is HUGE,"and "Wow, it needs at least another 3-5 years."

I smelled blueberries, faint raspberries, and lots of bloody meat, with the hot smell of alcohol also prominent. The fruit was tightly coiled like a court maiden's braided hair. I could make out some dark berries, but the flavors weren't clear. A nice acidity tingled the tongue, but powerful and astringent tannins were basically dominating the experience. Overall, I would not recommend this wine to drink now, but I would definitely enjoy tasting it again several years down the road. Deetrane and Mike felt the same way, so I will have my other bottle thrown in the dungeon for at least 5 years. At some point thereafter, I shall summon it before me and commission the roasting of a pheasant.