#19- Fiano

Viva Italia- usually. I think this wine was a bit of a miss. We didn't have a problem drinking it, but it certainly was nothing of note. In other words, pass! The poor Italians- first they lose in the World Cup and now this- a disappointing wine. Tsk tsk.

The Italian wine I tried was a Fiano, from the Mandra Rossa Winery in Sicily. The Fiano grape is a fairly rare grape, mainly because it grows a very small yield. The Fiano is only grown in Italy and Australia. You'd think with it being such a rare wine that it would be expensive, but you'd be wrong. This bottle of wine was on sale for $14.99 from the Liquor Depot in West Edmonton. I literally walked into the store, saw the wine on display, checked to see if the Fiano grape was on my list, and when confirmed, bought it! The whole transaction took me less than two minutes.

I had high hopes for this wine, with it being Italian. Maybe they should stick to red. Anyway, I drank this wine with a nice vegetarian salad. I was still eating salmon from my barbeque a few night before but I really felt I needed just a good plate of vegetables. So a beautiful salad was on tap for dinner. The wine was chilled, the sun was shining, the salad calling my name- so I ate outside on my patio to enjoy the wine...

And was disappointed. The wine itself tasted like fortified apple juice. To me, it was very fruity and flat. This wine may have been not half bad had it been carbonated. Reading about this Fiano in particular, it mentions that their is a strong taste of tropical fruit. Is apple tropical? It also mentions it goes well with white meat and fish so I guess it was okay to be eating left over salmon again...

I took the wine over to my brother's house a couple of days later and he drank it prior to a couple of the others (and a big steak dinner). He didn't mind the wine but had similar thoughts on it about it tasting fruity. He was able to drink it just as is, with no food accompanying his drinking so it couldn't have been that bad. But it certainly wouldn't be a wine I'd recommend any time soon. I'd like to try a different Fiano (maybe when I'm in Italy in the fall perhaps?) to compare.

The next wine is #20!! I think we're doing a Zinfandel or Primitivo (same grape) as we have a couple of bottles that we're eager to try. So maybe #20 will be a comparison of two wines, two names, one grape!

#18- Zweigelt

If you like a Valpolicella, you will like this wine! One of the very first wines I was ever introduced to was a Masi Valpolicella by my friend Mark in St. Catharines, Ontario. That's when I was living in Ottawa and made frequent trips to the Niagara region. It was here that I attended their wine festivals and began to appreciate wine for what it is.While a Valpolicella is a mix of 4 different grape varietals (and therefore I can't drink it as a part of this 185 grape experiment), the Zweigelt grape comes very very close to its taste.

The Zweigelt grape comes from Austria and this wine does also. The Pleil Winery in Weinvertel, Austria (two Austrian wines in a row!).I didn't realize until I started exploring more wines that Austria was such a big producer of wines! We've drank two of their most popular grapes varieties- the Gruner Veltliner and the Zweigelt but they do produce many good wines. I should mention too that Austria is the home of Schnaps and I had the pleasure of visiting the original Schnaps store in Vienna and brought a boatload back including their infamous Absinthe! That has nothing to do from wine but Austrians understand, know and market their alcohol very very well.

The wine is velvety, not unlike the Valpolicella. It is dry and leaves a subtle but apparent aftertaste in your mouth. It is not a wine to be sipped slowly and by itself on a warm evening but works well with food. I had a lot of salmon leftover from the previous evening and it was beautiful outside and I wasn't about to cook. So barbequed salmon in a  light garden salad it is. Not exactly a perfect meat and wine match but it worked for me on this occasion. It is usually flavoured with fruit such as cherries and while I could taste the fruit, I couldn't be sure that it was cherries. This is also a wine that definitely needs to breathe and I noticed a difference in taste as I let the wine sit there.

While I loved this wine, my brother could have cared less, even with the bottle having been opened for a few days already. He didn't particularly take to it and found the taste quite strong. I did notice however, that it stop him from drinking the glass! He is becoming more and more attuned to red wines but he still favours white wines and a white wine was up next so I'm pretty sure he was looking forward to that one! In any case, he won't be grabbing for a Zweigelt any time soon. That's okay. We still have a 165+ wines to go! The next one on our list is an Italian wine and it took some searching to find- the Fiano.