Wine Tasting Success!

I want to be a good wino. Having a glass of wine at the end of a long hard day is a great enjoyment for me. What better way to become a good wino than to attend a wine tasting. Thanks Groupon (and Taryn) for making this possible!
I learned a few things that I would like to share.
Red meat normally goes with red wine, white meat and fish normally go with white wine. I think this is true because when I think about drinking red wine, I really do wish I had a steak to go with it.
If you swirl most wines around really good in your glass, it can help release an even greater smell and flavor as opposed to when you drink it right away. Go ahead, pour a glass of white wine, smell it, then swirl it around for a couple minutes and smell it again. Amazing! I must admit, I have been doing this with every glass of wine I have had since.
The last thing that I learned, which I found to be the most surprising being a novice wino, is that you can mix wine to suit your tastes. We mixed a Zinfandel and a Viognier. This has opened my eyes at the store to vineyard blends that I had no idea existed before. Maybe next we can be even more crazy and buy two different wines to mix on our own.
We tasted many wines, I know now that I am partial to whites. I have learned the art of tasting new wines. My favorite was the Viognier, a slightly sweet wine that can either taste like pear or other fruits depending on your palette.
So, be adventurous, swirl your wine and try a blend!

First Official Wine Tasting

Gina and I went tout for our first official wine tasting (thanks to Groupon).

It was the perfect night to go have some girl time after working from home in the morning, making 6 loaves of pumpkin bread, and watching the kids since school was out.
As evening approached we took the little road trip to Vintages Wine in Fort Collins.  The staff was nice and we were served a glass of pinot while we waited for our tasting session to begin.  The atmosphere was fun and vibrant even in the lobby area.  I suppose people are or should be cheery and in good moods when they are there to drink or bottle wine
We were escorted back to our private tasting room and were joined by 4 other tasters. One couple out on date night and the other, well, I wasn't apparently listening well and never did figure out if they were brother and sister or on a date.  Either way after introductions and the first few tastes our room was all chatter which made for a very fun night.

There were 7 bottles lined up ready for us to try and we were told they were all dry wines.  I wasn't the most thrilled by this, but after the first couple I figured I wouldn't notice any different.  We started with the white wines and were shown the proper way to taste wine.  The rules:  smell, small sip that you let float over all your taste buds to awaken them, swirl in the glass to let the wine breathe, smell again (notice the change), and then a nice swig.  There was a glass of water and a tray of crackers and cheese lined up for us to clean our palettes if our taste buds did started to fade.  I made a few notes next to the different wines we tried.  Some of them smelled good, one had a stranger taste than just dry wine - hmmm... okay, I only made 2 notes.  Gina and I were scoring the wines on a scale of 1 to 10.  I did score about 4 of the wines we tried.  I never got above a 6 and most were around a 3 to 4 range.  This is not to say the wine was bad at vintages it was probably more me being the newbie wine drinker and still becoming accustomed to new tastes.

And no good night out goes without a story or two.  As I was sipping my wine and tasting I don't know what I was doing with my eyes or my face, but whatever it was it must not have looked normal. The "coach" of our wine tasting asked me twice if I was okay.  Well that is a little embarrassing in a small group.  Yes, I am fine.  Because I had no clue why he kept asking me this I thought I better give an explanation to my group if I was making odd expressions or something.  I really think that I was just having my own thoughts about the wine.  So I proceeded to tell our group that a week ago my mom had been visiting and for fun we went and tried out botox.  I now have no expressions or maybe odd one because I don't know how to express my thoughts or tastes in this instance and cannot move my forehead or my eyebrows.  Everyone seemed to get a kick out of the story and had fun with it.  I on the other hand was still expressionless!

Next it was onto the red wines.  I was looking forward to the reds and thought that I would enjoy them more than the whites, but was surprised I didn't.  I did however enjoy when they mixed the Zinfandel with the Viognier.  Who knew you could mix white and red wine?!  I am thinking some experiments may have to been done with this new discovery.

At the close of our tasting session the brother/sister-date were trying to get their buzz on and refilling their glasses themselves.  We all probably would have stayed for more if they would have let us. We probably all had flushed pink faces from the wine consumption and I'm sure no one was feeling any pain.

We each were awarded with a take home bottle of our choosing.  A certificate of sorts for passing our first wine tasting since we were all newbies    (although it was really just part of the Groupon).

Our first wine tasting event I feel was an ultimate success.

Taryn

Our take home winner of the evening!

Our "Cool" Glasses

Our wine tasting needed something… cool glasses. My husband has a beer stein made with gel in the wall that freezes and keeps his beer nice and chilly; I had to find something like that for us.
Bealls of Florida had exactly what I pictured and they were on sale.  Score! For 5.99 each (orig. 9.99) I got a double wall wine glass with freeze gel. The one review posted on the website gave the glass 5 out of 5 stars. We had to have them!
Bealls shipped them quickly, they are pretty, light weight, and hold a healthy amount of wine. Unfortunately, the freeze gel could only keep my first glass of wine cold; as soon as the second glass was poured it was like drinking from a cheap plastic dollar store wine glass... very disappointing and I was very glad I did not pay full price for them.  On a scale of one to five, I give them a 2 (they did at least keep one glass cold).
Needless to say, I will continue my search for wine glasses that fit perfectly into our journey of becoming winos.

Wednesday night Wine - Pinot Grigio



Candoni Pinot Grigio D.O.C. ITALY



Taryn

Gina

Gina picked the first bottle of wine for our first official "Wine Club"!

The Pinot was not as dry as others that I have tried and after the first 2 sips was leaving a good taste in my mouth.  This was a wine that went down pretty quickly and we could have easily opened another bottle, so I would say this is not a sipping wine.  On a rating scale of 1 to 5 stars I would give this a 3.  Click on the link above and check out this company's many recipes to go with their wines.  They have great cocktails recipes and also food pairing to help out those of us who just really don't know what we're doing, like me!

While catching my friend up on my 2 week vacation to MN lake country we hit on some great conversation topics:  the smartphone addiction and kids and parents and who we let influence our children.  We both admitted to being addicted to our phones.  I had previously had a conversation with one of my cousins and she made me really think about the use of my phone when I am out with others. She said, "I don't need my phone or check it constantly because I am already spending time with the people I am with, others can wait."  This really hit home for me.  Take notice next time you are with a group and give yourself a limit or put your phone away for one hour without checking in and really dig into the people and conversation around you, my bet is you will feel rewarded and so will they.