Spanish Wine Blind Tasting
We went to the Spanish & Portugese blind tasting hosted by Great Wines this past weekend & had a great time tasting some great Spanish wines. Guessing was more difficult this week, than last week. I got the one & only rosé right & that is it. La got one of the reds correct plus the rosé. It was a Tempranillo.
We have been using tasting Saturdays as our wine buying days these last few weeks. Whether it is a Great Wines tasting or a Buster's tasting, or both, there are some great deals to be had. Buster's gives you 15% off of your entire order on tasting Saturdays & Great Wines has the wines they feature at the tasting on sale & they are always a good deal.
This week bought two bottles from the tasting, 2002 Castell de Remei Gotim Bru Tempranillo/Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot & 2004 Osborne Solaz Shiraz/Tempranillo. These were also the winners in the voting too. The top two whites were Hermanos Lurton Bianco & Torres Viña Sol.
We had the Gotim Bru the other night with a Provençal-style grilled chicken, with grilled eggplant, fresh speckled lima beans & mashed potatoes. On its own the wine was straight forward & simple with some dark fruit & earth in the nose as well as the palate with a touch of mint in the finish, the tannins were soft & were balanced by a nice acidity. It didn't shine until we had a glass with dinner, where it accented the rosemary, thyme & basil flavored, grilled chicken.
The Osborne will probably get opened tonight with our pizza...but then again the Zaccagnini Montepulciano "Stick Wine" will be good with the pie as well. Life is full of difficult decisions.
We have been using tasting Saturdays as our wine buying days these last few weeks. Whether it is a Great Wines tasting or a Buster's tasting, or both, there are some great deals to be had. Buster's gives you 15% off of your entire order on tasting Saturdays & Great Wines has the wines they feature at the tasting on sale & they are always a good deal.
This week bought two bottles from the tasting, 2002 Castell de Remei Gotim Bru Tempranillo/Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot & 2004 Osborne Solaz Shiraz/Tempranillo. These were also the winners in the voting too. The top two whites were Hermanos Lurton Bianco & Torres Viña Sol. We had the Gotim Bru the other night with a Provençal-style grilled chicken, with grilled eggplant, fresh speckled lima beans & mashed potatoes. On its own the wine was straight forward & simple with some dark fruit & earth in the nose as well as the palate with a touch of mint in the finish, the tannins were soft & were balanced by a nice acidity. It didn't shine until we had a glass with dinner, where it accented the rosemary, thyme & basil flavored, grilled chicken. The Osborne will probably get opened tonight with our pizza...but then again the Zaccagnini Montepulciano "Stick Wine" will be good with the pie as well. Life is full of difficult decisions.
posted by Collin @ 12:21 PM
2 Comments:
At 1:33 PM,
Michael Hughes said…
Why don't you show Joe's Wines some love? Have you ever been to one of their tastings? They are a blast! Great wines, good midtown crowd. Besides, in my opinion Buster's has the worst customer service in town. If you can even call it that. Great Wines is wonderful, great selection, great customer service (talk to Richie, he has a great palate), but I've got to support my midtown businesses.
At 4:12 PM,
Collin said…
We LOVE Joe's & the Joe's crew. We also love going to their tastings, but lately we have only been hitting up the free tastings, as La is only getting a tiny stipend from the Univeristy (damn perpetual student!!) & while I love my work as a graphic artist, it will never make me rich (at least in this town).
Plus since you brought it up....;)
Joe's has the highest prices in Midtown...& I will even bet the city. Also, I don't know if you have noticed, but their tastings are now $30 & they are offering less wines. Even when the Joe's tastings were $25 with 40+ wines there was not enough time to get enough tasting in. 2 hours is just not enough time to make your way through that many wines, even 30 wines.....at least how I like to taste. I like to take my time & prefer not to 'power taste', plus I enjoy spending time at the tables chatting about the offerings. I will gladly trade banner space for a couple of tickets though.
As far as Buster's customer service...I agree with you 100%. There is a handful of good people there (I always enjoy my brief chats with John Vego) but they do need to recognize the fact that not everyone that shops there are frat boys assembling ingredients for the weekends 'hunch punch', especially the bratty girls at the register.
It was not my intention to pit wine shop against wine shop...I just wanted to share my experiences with the tastings I have been to recently & the bargains to be found.
I definitely agree with you on supporting Mid-town business. Great Wines has to give us free booze to make it out that far east. :)
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