Tasting - Pinett

We are here on Monday, January 31st, 2022, what does this mean you ask? It means another bachelor night in which I get to try another great wine and expand my growing pallet of wine. On the menu today, was a rose that I thought looked like it would taste good, bought from Kroger. 

Name: Pinette
Variety: Terre Sicilian Rosato
Country: Italy
Region: Sicily  
Vintage: 2020
Price: $6.59

I wanted to give this wine a taste before I read any reviews online because I wanted to make sure I distinguished my own feelings about the wine before getting influenced by reading others. My first impression of the wine based on the smell of wine was a very strong floral smell, almost overwhelming in fact (pg 46). The smell had hints of fruit but in my opinion, they were not pleasant and smelled more like perfume (pg 47). So I was honestly not excited to give it the taste test, but I was committed. The wine had an extremely strong acidic taste to it. So much so that I could not distinguish anything else in the wine. I even gave myself multiple tries to clear my taste buds and try again but the acidy of wine was just too much for me to handle, and I sadly had to put the wine down after only one glass. I did not try this wine with any food, but I cannot imagine any food that would taste good with it, maybe something that had a sweet or tangy taste. 

The review that I choose to include about this wine comes from Bob's Brew and Liquor review, maybe not the best choice but he goes into good detail. He mentions in his review that the wine he believes this wine to not be a complex wine. He then states how the wine is "awfully sweet" and how the acidy of wine is balanced decently well with the sweetness in order to make for a glass of good-tasting wine. The flavor hints that he gets from the wine are strawberry and tart rhubarb, which honestly I do not get at all. His review did give me some valuable insight however. It made me appericate how the acidy could be used in order to make for a fuller body wine that maybe I could not appericate just yet, as this is the beginning of my journey. However, I cannot lie to myself and say that I enjoyed this wine, maybe I will revisit this wine someday when I have a more acquired taste for wine but for now, not a fan. 

Foad's Current Experience With Wine

 Wine has always been something that I have seen but never gotten into myself because it seemed too diverse when compared to other alcoholic beverages. Other drinks are just far easier to get used to because you can drink them over and over again until you get accustomed to the flavors present. However, with wine, as we have discussed recently, it is almost impossible to get two similar wine bottles that taste exactly the same, and what this means for me is that I need to really know what kind of wine I like to drink which will require some trial and error, and about a year and a half ago I started that process. 

The wine tasting process all started when my friends and I started watching the bachelor and bachelorette every Monday as an ongoing tradition. It was during these episodes that we all decided that we need to choose a bottle of wine for each episode and finish the bottle of wine before the episode was over, so not knowing what kind of wine I liked had to start grabbing random bottles that I thought looked good. 

Name: Bay Bride Pinot Grigio Colombard

Varietal: Pinot Grigio 51%/Colombard 49%

Region: Bay Bridge

Country: USA

Year: 2006 

Price: $3.99

I will not lie, I was not a huge fan of Pinot Grigio and it kind of led me astray from wine because the experience was not good. It had this bitter aftertaste that I thought was the worst and I was sadly not able to finish it. Eventually, I was able to get over myself and start trying other wines again, and to my surprise, I actually enjoy Rose wines a lot more and it was these lighter ones that I did not like. If it was not for that first experience of trying something randomly, I would not know that I strongly dislike Pinot Grigio and actually like Rose. 

I am excited about this class because I hope to learn how to better choose wine for myself that I enjoy in a less painful way like my first experience. If I am able to understand why I dislike Pinot Grigio Colombard and enjoy Rose, then maybe I will be able to choose a wine that I like at a consistent rate. I also want to get into the wine and food experience as I have always heard about the combo of wine and cheese but have never tried it out for myself and am very excited to get working on some combinations that I think will go well together. Overall, am I very excited about this class and am ready to learn more about wine.