Not sure I've posted in here about my recent trip into wines.
I've always said I hated wine, and that it's just posh vinegar for chips, but months ago someone suggested I try red wine after I mentioned I want to move away from high mass volume drinks, so beers and ciders etc, and get into high abv stuff, so once a month I tried a different red wine. I shop at ADSA mainly so that's where I was buying from, I tried Shiraz, Pinot Noir, Cabernet, Merlot, Sauvignon, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinotage. Pinotage was my favourite, I found it easy to drink, low acidity and not very bitter. Next was Shiraz, low acidity again but more bitter than Pinotage, just enough bitterness to give me a head shake/shiver thing. The rest of the wines were meh, nothing to praise. These wines were various brands, non of them ADSA own branded.
So after my supermarket foray I got into wanting to go to a wine taster and try more reds, some whites and rosé. Thinking of all the times I had previously tried wine it was always white or rosé and I hated every bit of them, especially the last rosé I tried, super bitter and super acidity, it was really gross. I Googled wine tasters near me and there is a wine shop 1.6 miles away from me in town which was a surprise even after I realized I knew where it was and had driven past in hundreds of times and thought "Puh... wine". I went and visted the shop and straight away was taken around the corner where several bottles were open for customers to sample, and I tried this wine that was amazing, it blew my mind, it tasted NOTHING like what I had tried from ASDA, not even in the same galaxy. While drinking it the guy is pointing out the flavours and sensations and I could taste and feel every bit of it, where the ASDA wines even the Shiraz and Pinotage that I liked were a dry acidic bitter mess. The wine I tried was a Rioja reserva, this one -
https://www.majestic.co.uk/wines/definition-rioja-reserva-14573 - for the curious of you.
I went to that shop the first week of November and on the 29th they had a wine taster. Fast forward to the 29th and I attend my first ever wine taster. First in line were the whites, "bleh I don't like whites". I tried all 4 of the whites, and I still have my score sheet so out of 10 I gave a 5/10 to Ladoucette Puolly-Fume, 6/10 to Mas Querido Field Blend, 5/10 to a Chardonnay. Three of the four so far, I didn't dislike any of them but also didn't super enjoy any of them hence the 5/10 scores, now the fourth white wine, a Visatamar Moscatel.... 10/10 wow, absolutely stunning, I couldn't believe it was a wine, and a white wine! now.. it is a dessert wine so not one to have if you want a normal drink of white wine, but I would choose this every time, breakfast noon and dinner. Here it is -
https://www.majestic.co.uk/products/vistamar-late-harvest-moscatel-39271
Over to the red wines, 4 reds but one was all finished by the time I got there. Caronne St Gemme I marked 5/10, Alturo Malbec 7/10, so pretty good, I would have to try next to a Shiraz or Pinotage to rank it among them. Agenda Dao 5/10. And the not available one was Penfolds Max's Shiraz-Cabernet Sauvignon. While at the reds a bloke started talking to me and I mentioned the Rioja I tried a few weeks back, that it was really really nice and he countered me with a red wine called The Guv'nor, saying it's the best red wine and he recommends it to everyone he meets at the taster events.
There was a Gin setup too, I tried the regular Gin and it was nothing out of the ordinary in taste. The rosé saint marie gin was much nicer, both £40 a bottle though so nah. I got cool points from the gin host who was female though because I drink it neat or with just a tad of a mixer to take the edge off, I'm not one of these massive diluters like 10% Gin and 90% mixer.
I left the shop with 4 bottles, the Rioja, the Guv'nor and 2x Vistamar and I've not even opened any of them yet, I planned to open one last weekend but it fell through, but tomorrow I plan to open The Guv'nor
That's a lot to read, I hope it's intriguing.
[/user]
What about his wine, though? 
