Wine About It Wednesday - December

Hey There!

If you thought last month was lax on the wine front, you ain't seen nothing yet. December was truly lax!

It's not that I didn't drink wine (we all know that!), it's that I mainly drank wine away from the house. It's the holiday season and I went out and about just a little bit. Yep, your girl is being a grownup and doin' a little something this year (more on that plan in my New Years Blog -- of course).

I went out with some folks from work and sipped on some Riesling from The Seeker Wine*. It's a German Riesling that I actually enjoyed. There have been many German Rieslings that I have tried and they were too tart and/or dry for my liking. This one sat nicely. It was nice to try it by the glass but now, I can't find it in my local stores! When I do find it, I'll add it to my Wine About It Wednesday again, just so you can see the full sized bottle. The other places that I went to didn't have good Rieslings so I didn't get a full glass and I didn't bother to pull the information on them.

The one of the two wines that were open at the house was my Paradise Peak Sweet Riesling. Last time I went to Total Wine & More, I picked up 2 bottles so I am just finishing up the last one. I've mentioned last month that it is one of my top five. If you are new (welcome, next time bring your own wine glass) Paradise Peak is a wine that you will probably always find in my house.

I also picked up Jam Jar Sweet Wine and really liked it! It's not a top ten status just yet, it might make it. I call it a comfortable wine. Jam Jar's website calls it a "charming, easy-drinking Moscato...[with] peach, apricot, lychee and orange blossom". I can pick-up the peach notes and I figure that's why it's such a refreshing wine. I enjoyed it and will probably buy it again.

And that's it. No, seriously, that's all the wine I have at my house. Not very helpful for you but easy on my budget. I do have some bottles picked out for January so you should have a proper tasting for the last Wednesday of the month. Come back for that. AND, we have a topic to think about for then...homework, if you will.

Wine fridge or no? Talk amongst yourselves and we will discuss later.

* theseekerwines.com/riesling is where I "borrowed" the picture from (I didn't do it with ANY disrespect I promise). I am still searching out places where I can purchase this wine from locally. Georgia is one of those states that doesn't take to kindly to shipping wines in so lots of companies don't ship here.

**Most of the time, the wine notes are gathered from the Total Wine & More website -- the website where this wino lady gets her drink on. I also attend classes and tastings there (shout out to my peeps!).

Wine About It Wednesday - November

Hey There!

You only see 4 wines AND 2 of them are almost full bottles that I am struggling to finish. Spoiler alert -- I only liked 1 of them enough to repurchase.

And may I remind you that I am soooo not a wine connoisseur?! I know what I like and I'm learning all the time why I like the ones I like. And for every 1 wine that I decide I adore, there are normally 4 or 5 that I mark off my list.

My first wine choice was a Chateau Ste. Michelle Columbia Valley, Harvest Select Sweet Riesling. I figured that because it was a sweet Riesling, I'd like it. Weeeeeeellllllll, it was ok. It wasn't as sweet as I liked and almost too dry for me. The Colombia Valley company website says that "Richness is balanced by crisp acidity to maintain harmony". It was too tart for me.

The next wine that I picked up was Kung Fu Girl. I picked it up simply because the bottle looked interesting. My favorite wine store of all time (Total Wine & More) said similar things to the Columbia Valley, Harvest Select Sweet Riesling. They called Kung Fu Girl "Crisp, Peach, Citrus, Light-bodied". It's better that the previous wine. It's refreshing but with a serious dry note

Another bottle that caught my eye was this Hogue Late Harvest Riesling, also from the Columbia Valley. Wine Enthusiast and TotalWine.com say that this carries some sugar but not enough to be cloying. I probably should look for "very cloying" in my descriptions from now on because this too was too dry for my liking. My thought process was that it's from Washington State and apparently I like the soil there so I'll probably like this one. I was wrong. This one was tart and dry too. Again, trying to work through this but I might give up. The kiddo is making pasta sauce with this so I may add some (we aren't making THAT much sauce so most of it will go to waste -- sorry!).

The last wine is one of my faves. Paradise Peak Sweet Riesling isn't my favorite of all time but it's one of my top five. It's a sweet wine (but not cloyingly so). It's refreshing and lovely and I can sip on it for a while (and then I realize half the bottle is gone, and it's just me...). I like it best out of the fridge for about 10- 15 minutes.

And, side note. I noticed something when I was writing this "review". On TotalWine.com, one of the "expert reviewers" had a list of all of the wines that they gave 5 stars to underneath one of my fave wines. I decided that I might just take a peek at their list and pull a few from there. Perhaps that's a better way to select that the "ohhh this bottle is pretty" method! LOL.

So did you try anything new this month? What's your method for picking wines? Is it better than my "pretty bottle" method?