Right, so this week I was supposed to post that $9 Côtes du Ventoux I couldn’t face last week, but…oops! Somebody drank it all. (wasn’t me!) As I recall, it smelled like Grenache and tasted like grapefruit. If I were tasting it blind, I may have guessed it was a white wine. Well, Côtes du Ventoux is known for being a light red so, I guess this one was right on the money. I have nothing to compare it to though as I have not had another Côtes du Ventoux. At any rate, this particular bottle was not really my style. It seemed surprisingly flabby with food but, apparently it was quaffable (judging by the now empty bottle).
Meanwhile, one week and two days after TasteCamp East, I think I’m almost ready to open another bottle of wine! In all honesty, I think I got in over my head going to Long Island with a bunch of professional wine tasters. Okay, okay…only half of them were actual professional wine tasters in the sense that wine tasting is listed in their job description—the other half totally could be professionals though. One thing they all have in common: They all got chops!
Yep, I was spitting [almost] everything at TasteCamp but, I think the wine was somehow soaking into my bloodstream through my cheek tissue or something (I believe I’ve heard of that kind of thing happening). Anyway, I have spent the last week+ just trying to dry out. Rest assured people: I’m pretty sure I will drink wine again. I am merely unable to venture a guess as to when. Soon, I’m sure! But, on that note, I would like to announce a change to the $10 Tuesday format.
Life's too short to drink cheap wine.–Anonymous
…Cheap wine; bad wine; no matter how you phrase it, nobody wins from the Tasters A & B tossing the dice on a $10 bottle of wine and losing. It seems to me that there actually are a lot of pretty uninteresting wines available in the $10-and-under category and finding one that is worth mentioning is luck of the draw. Being as we don’t have the resources (or inclination) to taste through dozens of $10 wines every week in order to distill the field down to a weekly gem, $10 Tuesday will no longer be a weekly feature. Worry not value-minded Reader: whenever we do run into a fun or interesting $10 wine, we’ll post a $10 Tuesday to let you know about it. I’m just not going to kill my liver trying to seek one out every single week. If you know of a producer or a region producing attention-worthy wines in the $10 price range, please feel free to pass your recommendations on to us. We’re always happy to find such values in wine. In the meantime, I’ve got a cellar full of 15-35 dollar wines that needs my attention. ;)
6 comments:
Worse than all the tasting at WBC? I'm still not sure how I survived 2 days before it tasting, the whole WBC and 3 days tasting after! But I'm ready to do it all again this year!
Hey Megan! Well, I missed most of Friday at WBC and I didn't even try to taste all the Zins and NZ wines! I also only tasted about 35% of the wines at the Grand Tasting on Saturday so, I probably tasted about 60-70 wines spread out over 3 days at WBC (even though I could have potentially tasted over 200 if I'd been diligent!) ;)
There was no slacking allowed at TasteCamp with Lenn though--so we wound up tasting about 100+ wines in ONE day!! I know, that's a normal days work for professionals but...OMG!!! :O
I think that Luke (Paul Newman) and Dragline (George Kennedy) would disagree about what to have for breakfast the next day. Me, I was back in the saddle and ready to go Sunday night. Just like Luke, it is a matter of pacing yourself, but by Saturday night, I had icepacks on my wrists from swirling too much and my palate was in a sling. (Bring on the bacon wrapped scallops and shrimp-on-a-stick.)
The fact that the gremlins broke into the wine fridge and sucked you $10.00 bottle dry must mean that it was a hell of a lot better than the other open bottles left behind to go funky. Enjoy this wine with mild food, as I er-uh, as the gremlins did.
I thought you and A did great B! None of us are "professional." I certainly don't get paid to guzzle wine like we did at TasteCamp. You have the confidence to say what you like and what you don't like and that's about as professional as any of us really need to be.
Smell like Grapes is a nice title. Keep on sharing. :).
aw, thanks you guys :)
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