Konzelmann Four Generations Fresco Secco, VQA

We here at RWR have a lot to celebrate. My high school friend MB got married last weekend to the love of her life in a beautiful wedding. My OTHER high school friend Dr. D got ENGAGED!!!!! My friend from undergrad E is getting married in April. My friend K got married! My friends C and R did too! M is pregnant! And I, along with many of my grad school friends, are teaching for the first time. It is a season of excitement. It calls for sparkling wine!

But here is the truth, dear reader. While I love reds, whites, and roses from around the world, sparkling wine and champagne are not my best friends. Perhaps fuelled by memories of defiantly drinking Bright's Presidents Dry Sparkling wine at New Years with my parents to prove I was sophisticated, the thought of drinking it makes me cringe. So I took a leap of faith. I did something I have never done. I used the LCBO Wine Match tool: http://lcbo.ca/winestyles/index.shtml. I think I know my own pallette in all other regards pretty well. But I took a chance on it for sparkling wine. I put in "sparkling" as my colour, and then knowing my budget would not allow "rich and complex" and that since I don't like the taste of sparkling wine "Medium-bodied and flavourful" might not be my bag, baby, I chose to go with "Light and fruity," a tried and true description of wines I liked. This one popped up and at $11.70 was a good match to my price range. I took it to my friend Miss J's house to drink in between MB's ceremony and reception. Her mom, Mama M, is a wine lover like me, so I knew I'd be in good company. So with the scene set, let's cheers the couple and taste some wine!

Mama M - I liked this wine. It was a bit nutty flavoured and dry. It was very drinkable. Though my favourite overall champagne is Veuve Clicquot and my favourite cheap champagne is Freixenet Carta Nevada Sparkling, I would be happy to add this into my rotation. This wine is a Riesling as well, which I don't usually like, but then again I also don't usually like sweet wines, but I do like this one. A fitting celebration of MB!

A - This is sweet and a little lemony and fruity. It's just dry enough to keep the sweetness from being obnoxious or headache-inducing though! This is a characteristic I appreciate, because I find other sparkling wines  give me huge headaches. This wine was more like a fizzy normal wine, instead of a fake champagne type sparkling wine. It is very pleasantly fruity and it does have a bit of a sweet nutty aftertaste, like almonds. I could actually drink this on its own for fun, as a normal drinking wine, which is saying something. MB's wedding is JUST THAT GOOD!

J - I like it. I am not a champagne drinker but would finish this glass. This is saying a lot because that is not always the case for champagnes and sparkling wines.

Papa J - I liked it, I tasted a little oak.

A Dry Spell

As most of you probably now, I (M), am pregnant. So how does one review wines while pregnant? Well it's a tricky thing. When I first found out I was pregnant I stopped drinking all alcohol immediately. That being said, I had consumed more than my fair share over the long weekend before and was enjoying my glass of wine most nights of the week when I was unknowingly pregnant. Do I feel bad about that? Not really. I'm not exactly a binge drinker normally, and having talked to friends and family who have been there before, this is often the case when you're not strictly planning a pregnancy.

So do I drink now? The short answer is no. Some of you might be thinking "of course not! Who drinks when they're pregnant? Does she want a baby with an arm growing out of its head?!". My answers to that would be "lots of people apparently." and "while that might be neat initially, it would be difficult to dress a baby for cold Northern Ontario winters with an extra appendage where a toque goes."

But to address the more important issue, many people do drink while pregnant. I've read tons of online testimonies from women who drink, within reasonable limits, while carrying babies. There's been a recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Emily Oster which advocates drinking "like a European adult" while pregnant (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323514404578652091268307904.html). Now I have problems with that phrase, having seen many a grown person drinking like a fish while in Europe, but the idea is the same. Enjoy a glass of wine in the evening, not a bottle or three and things should be all good. I even went so far as to ask my doctor what he thought about it. His answer was "it's not kosher for a doctor to tell a pregnant lady it's ok to drink, but there are no conclusive studies proving that enjoying a glass of wine every night will harm a baby."

So...permission from an expert? Yes and no. He's right, there are no conclusive studies that show the negative effects of limited alcohol intake on babies because no one is willing to run that kind of trial on pregnant ladies and fetuses, but I'm still the expert on me. I agree with him, a glass of wine probably won't hurt anything, but -- and this is the big one -- BUT if something did happen to my baby, a third arm, somehow under/over developed, whatever, I know who I would blame. Me. It doesn't matter if science proves it's not my fault, I'd feel responsible because that's just who I am. My decision is based on my own self-awareness and I don't judge others who would make a different decision, but that's the way she goes, as they say. I've decided to save my next glass of wine for a moment of celebration -- preferably celebrating the birth of a healthy child. And a glass, or three, I will have, but I can wait. Dreaming about wine (no, for real, I do that) in the meantime will make that moment all the sweeter!

2011 Henry of Pelham Baco Noir, VQA

This wine was L's choice after she loved the much more expensive Reserve Baco from Henry of Pelham. At $13.95 a bottle, this wine was a much more reasonable choice than the $25 Reserve and was an appropriate choice to drink on its own with friends! We went over to L's friend, L also (L Eng. to distinguish), and had a lovely evening in on a rainy night out.

L - This wine is very grapey and not at all ash-tray-y. It tastes quite young. It is bright and a bit acrid at the end of the taste. It is a really nice wine to drink more than one glass of. It may be nice chilled or with BBQ. It is a more typical baco than the reserve, but it lacks the fruitiness of the more expensive pick.

L Eng.- It is musty and minerally tasting. It needs more air I think (after this we let it breathe for a bit and discussed the merits of decanters and aeroators). It like this wine and it is not very alcohol forward, unlike some reds which can be boozy and juicy. It is a very thin wine though.

A - It is musty and woody smelling. It tastes very simple and then we let it breathe some. After the breathing, it was a light and very smokey wine, with a little taste of cherry-esque flavour going on, but there was not much else going on beyond smoke. It was a very young wine with not much going on and lacked the complexity of the reserve. It was a good wine for casual sipping.

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.