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If anyone is wondering whether to come along to our Tongham
Tasters’ wine tasting evenings then our July event gave you at least three good
reasons to join us in future.
1. Taste some wines
that you might consider buying.
Tonight Sheila chose some wines that a number of us had looked at in
Sainsburys and wondered if they were worth trying. Now we know whether to buy or not.
2. Learn more about
wines. Our July evening showed how
Sheila’s taste in wines had moved on in the last two years after regularly
attending our group, and at last I am beginning to identify a few more wines
when we taste them blind.
3. Have a cracking
good evening!
Sheila’s theme for the evening was wines picked from
Sainsbury’s fine wine rack during their 25% off promotion. As she nearly ran out of her £60 budget after
5 wines, the fourth wine was a £4 wine designed if we could taste the difference
between the more expensive wines and her “rogue” wine. Without the special offers, Sheila’s wine
would have cost her £94.14 instead of £59.91!
With competition from vacations, weddings, diets and the
Olympic Torch procession in Guildford, our numbers were down to just six this
month but it didn’t stop us having a fun evening.
So how did our tasting team rate Sheila’s taste in
wines? Scores shown below are in the
order John E, Steve S, Ian, Clive, Sarah and Sheila.
The prices quoted are what Sheila actually paid and include
special offers and 25% off promotions.
The wines, which we tasted blind, were in descending order
of preference:
Five of our tasting team voted this as their gold medal
winning wine of the evening. This wine
had some orange peel in the aroma and a good balance of sweetness, acidity and
oak. I identified it as Spanish but most
of the rest of the team thought it was a New World Cabernet Sauvignon. This mature wine showed no signs of age apart
from a nice mellowness. Scores were
15.5, 12.75, 16.5, 19, 17 and 16.5. The
scores are not surprising as this was a very good year for Rioja, so this is
definitely worthy of your consideration unless your tastes are at the very high
end.
2. Henri Dumanois Champagne NV, 12.5% French
Sparkling White, Sainsbury £10.50
Whilst only one person voted this as their winning wine of
the evening, another four had it in second place. This wine had a pleasant yeasty aroma and
the taste was dry but with enough sweetness in the fruit to make it very
pleasant. Most of us identified it as
being a Pinot dominated blend produced by a Champagne cooperative. Scores were 15, 12, 17, 18, 16.5 and 16. This was another high scoring wine and worthy
of consideration when on special offer.
One silver medal vote and three bronze medal votes put this
is third place. This dry, smooth red had
a very nice distinct peppery taste that helped identify it as a Syrah or Shiraz
wine. Scores were 13-, 12.25, 13, 18,
14 and 14. This is another wine from a
good year and maybe it will improve further, so worthy of your consideration.
4. Rocca Chianti Classico 2009 Riserva, 13.5% Italian Red, Sainsbury £12.75
Two bronze medal votes and three fourth places meant that
the Chianti Classico from yet another good vintage was in a firm fourth place
and a cut above the remaining wines. I
thought this tasted like an Italian wine, which it was, and it had quite a
pleasant balance of acidity. Sheila though
she detected curry in the aroma but this was probably just a dirty glass! Scores were 13+, 9.75, 10.5, 17, 11.5 and
14. Not a bad wine, and one that would
accompany an Italian meal well, but I think you could probably shop around and
do better at this price.
Two fourth place votes were the best our Cava got but it
kept it firmly off of bottom place. The
experience started off well with a pleasant yeasty aroma but the taste was
absolutely bone dry and not particularly appealing. The wine also had relatively large bubbles
and lost its fizz quite quickly. Scores
were 11, 9.5, 12, 15, 11 and 13. The
bottle frankly looked better than the contents that were inside but at under £7
you might consider this as a reasonably priced sparkler as long as your
expectations weren’t that great. Serve
it ice cold with a little orange juice as bucks fizz.
6. Vega Roja Rioja, 13% Spanish Red, Tesco
£4.19
Very firmly in last place, which is where five of our team
placed it, was the cheap wine from Tesco.
All of us pretty much identified that this was Sheila’s rogue wine
designed to test whether we could pick out a wine priced much lower than the
rest. This was a soft light wine with
some spice on the palate but perhaps a little bland. Scores were 11-, 12, 9.5, 15, 10 and 9. This wine, which is priced firmly in the
value range, might be quite pleasant if chilled to accompany a barbeque on a
hot summers day.
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| Wine and thyme scones proved a good combination |
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| Cheers! |
Feel free to join us at our coming events, which are as
follows:
Thursday August 23rd in Farnborough at 8pm. Theme to be decided.
Saturday September 22nd in Tongham at 8pm. Chablis fine wine evening.
Thursday October 11th in Tongham at 8pm. 6 French Wine Regions.
Most of our evenings cost just £10 but occasionally we
splash out more on some fine wines. We
will be having another fine wine evening in September, watch this space for more
details. If you want to join in any of
our evenings send John an email at tonghamtaster@gmail.com
or call John on 07717876743. Anyone with an interest in wine, food and good conversation will be most welcome.
Another date for your diaries is Saturday October 13th,
which is the provisional date set our next charity educational wine tasting
dinner in Tongham Village Hall. The
theme is an Andean Adventure and will feature some lovely food and wine from
Chile and Argentina.
Thanks to Clive, as usual, for the excellent photo at the
top of this blog posting.
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| Cheese board |
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