2011 Catastrophe White, Cattail Creek Estate Winery, VQA

Christmas is the time to please everybody, and as this blend proves, this wine matches well with everything! We at RWR endorse choosing blends as a way to please! At the end of this post is a review of some blends for your christmas table, but this one is one of my favourites! Since A is going home to a house with 7 cats, she likes this wine that donates some of the proceeds to pet charities. Good for the palate, AND the heart!

Tonight I recieved the second of my La pizzas. This one was made in exchange for extensive wool-winding labour. I have called it the "A2" pizza. What goes on an "A2"? Pears, mushroom veloutte, blue cheese, camambert, pine nuts, pancetta, arugalla, fresh cracked black pepper, and caramelized onions, all on a cold-fermented dough. YUM! This sweet but balanced wine was an excellent compliment to a very salty pizza. The pizza brought out the fruitness of the wine, and the wine mellowed out its saltiness. All in all, an excellent combination. Catastrophe White is a blend of Chardonnay Musqué, riseling, and gewurtztraminer grapes and is available at the very reasonable price of $13.95 at the LCBO.

A - This wine is really citrusy, appley, and all around fruity smelling, it smells quite crisp as well. It is quite light tasting, with a bit of a caramely fruity flavour to it. It is quite zingy and fresh-tasting, like a summer fruit bowl or orchard. It manages to be really fruity without being syrupy or overwhelmingly sweet, which is weird but good. I would like to drink this again, and would reccomend drinking it at its coldest.

L - It doesn't smell like anything to me, except maybe grapes. It was tart tasting and not sweet enough for me. I like my wine's sweet and syrupy, like Ironstone Obsession's Symphony wine.

K - This wine smells like a pear. I would drink this wine again, but didn't feel like wine tonight so only had a sip.

La - This was a lovely wine and I would drink it again. It is a well-balanced blend. As a non-white wine drinker, it can take a lot for me to like a white wine but I liked this one. It was bright, and citrusy but was a sweet balance of fruits like white peaches, pears, and grapes.

A Review of Other Christmas Dinner Friendly White Blends:

Peninsula Ridge Equinox - A Chardonnay forward blend for those who want a traditional match but also a little something different!

Palatine Hills Quattro - A lighter kickier blend for those who like it tart and citrusy. This would go well with my dad's orange stuffed turkey! (Available at the LCBO)

Gypsy White Blend, Kacaba Winery - A sweet blend for people like my sister who hate wine normally. Trick them with this beautiful blend! (Available at the LCBO)

Happy Holidays! We have one more post on non-drinkers special drinks and a champagne substitute left before we start a new year!

2010 CHOA Chardonnay, VQA blend, Karlos Estates

 This wine is my parent’s favourite wine and it was a gift from them. Given the $25 price point I was planning to save it for a special occasion, but what is better and more special than a night with P? I should warn you that this is a serious wine-drinkers wine, and that there was a lot going on in this bottle. Our choice to consume it on its own was probably ill-advised but we plowed ahead and made a nice night of it. My advice would be to savour this wine in small amounts and with food, because there is a lot going on and it would be easy to get overwhelmed! Perhaps if you were going to Christmas with your partner's wine connoisseur parents this would be a good choice as it says "I know you like wine and think you are savvy, because this one is complex" but also "I know we will be eating turkey so brought chardonnay."

P – This wine has a very intense smell, that is very winey, both oaky and grapey. It has a very strong typically chardonnay taste to it as well [editor’s aside: we learnt at our wine party a lot of people don’t like the taste of a chardonnay, so if that is you, steer clear!]. It also has a very alcoholy taste to it, maybe created by the wood flavourings. The tastes are very present and this is not a subtle wine. I couldn’t drink a lot of this wine because it was too dry and oaky for my tastes.

A – This wine tastes quite strongly like dried fruits and almost vanilla-y. It also has an aftertaste of alcohol that is quite tart. This is a very serious wine, and having tasted it I am not sure that I have the skills to do justice to everything that is going on in this wine in one review. It is not as woody as you would expect. The woody taste does not become subtle as it breathes. The varied ageing helps cut down a little on the oakyness, without making it disappear. It is also a pretty dry wine that makes your face pucker a little. It gets softer as it sits out and the vanilla and fruit taste becomes more prominent. It also becomes less alcoholy.  It is a light wine that is not as syrupy as I expected it to be from the deep yellow colour it had, which was almost like amber. This is not a sipping wine necessarily, I think I would drink this with food, perhaps a chicken dish with a creamy gravy, like a pot pie, or a dessert that was spicy yet sweet, like an apple pie.