Brown Bag Special! (Fuzion Shiraz Rose)

Today I decided to use my parents as an experiment. I bought them a wine and hid it in the convenient brown bag the LCBO serves its wine in. Only I knew what was in the brown bag, and wanted to see what they thought! This wine was very cheap, so I was especially curious to see if they would guess it. At $7.90 a bottle, this allegedly seasonal offering was a nice wine to try, and certainly recieved higher praise than many others we have had from this price point.

M – This wine is a rose (I can tell from looking at it). It is very fruit forward on the nose. It is also very mild tasting, and it is almost like it disappears in your mouth. From what I could get, there was a little bit of a strawberry flavour, but then the finish is a little bit acidic, maybe more like gooseberries. It is quite a simple wine but it has some body and a little bit of sparkle. It is definitely citrusy and acidic. After A told us the price, I was not surprised because cheaper wines are often less complex and have less diverse and strong flavours. I usually like Argentinian wines though, and they are usually well-priced too. I would drink this again at this price.

D – This wine smells very strongly of strawberries. It is also slightly tart. It does not have much of a finish, but I do like it. It is a very drinkable wine. It has a slight sparkle to it that is quite pleasing. After A told us what it is, I liked it even better. I couldn’t believe that it was such a cheap wine and wouldn’t have guessed it was under 8$, which is a good sign.

A – This is a tart and citrusy rose. It is a pretty acidic wine though, but not unpleasantly so. It is more like a sweet rose than a dry one. It is pretty fruity but doesn’t linger long on the tongue. I think I may choose a drier rose over this if it were me picking just for me, as I prefer the fruity, tingly cotton candy and grapefruit flavours in my roses, and don’t mind paying a little bit extra for that taste. However, this wine is by no means bad and it is certainly a winner in the under 8$ category for what we’ve tried. I would serve it to a group or myself, I just don’t mind splurging on roses when I am drinking for myself.