#99- Prieto Picudo

On 7th day of Wine-mas my true self gave to me- a bottle of Prieto Picudo.

From Spain.

So naturally when drinking a Spanish wine, the most obvious thing to do would be to pair it with some tapas- n'est pas? Pardonnez mon Francais, I do not speak Spanish. And tapas I do not have.

Being in good Alberta, we do have a lot of one thing-- perogies!! Bring on the Ukrainian version of the tapa. And yes, I've made that up. But it's Christmas time, I'm in the middle of a video shoot and I don't have time to cook let alone come up with a perfect wine pairing.

So yes, I paired a Spanish red wine with a  Ukrainian dish of perogies.

And it worked.

Ha! Yup, cheese and potato perogies went very well with this wine. Maybe it was the synthetic bacon bits, the ooey gooey mess of margarine and light sour cream or maybe it was just me willing this pairing to work, but I feel this did in fact work.

I'll be honest, the wine- Estay and the grape is Prieto Picudo was quite a bit tannic at first and hard to drink. But as the wine had time to breathe in my glass, I found it drinkable and am now working on my third glass of it.

This is indeed a very complex wine.

The wine is produced by Dominos DosTares in Spain and is considered to be one of their premium wines. If you ca speak Spanish, you can ready all about the Estay wine.  The wine is quite dark, a garnet, almost black wine. It's fairly aromatic. It's full of floral and fruity notes and reminds me of a tempranillo. No doubt about it though, this is a very tannic wine but man is it smooth on the tongue once the tannins dissipate. It is rather lovely. Lots of red fruit like cherry on the tongue. Yum.

The Prieto Picudo grape is primarily grown in Spain. There's really not much else to know about this grape other than I would definitely buy this wine again. If you know someone who likes big bold wines but likes to stray from the normal Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz wines, give them this one. It won't surely disappoint.

I can't believe tomorrow I write review #100. Merry Christmas to me. That also means one thing...which I'll share on Thursday!

#37- Nebbiolo

The wine we drank was a Barolo but the grape varietal it's known as is the Nebbiolo grape. It is also known as Italy's most noble grape so I ensured that we would indeed be trying an Italian wine. I picked up a ton of International wines (I think when I went in, I was expecting to buy two wines, I left with eight) from Sherbrooke Liquor store in Edmonton.

Now, I have been slightly lazy in my blog writing as I've been intertwining some other blog postings with the grape reviews so I'm actually four ahead (completed #40 tonight) but one thing it did allow to do was try and retry the Barolo wine along with the Barbera D'Asti wine (#38). I found both wines quite similar and I can't say that like one more than the other. But let me get back to focusing on the Barolo. The wine is from the Batasiolo winery in the Piedmont region of Italy and while the winery makes more than one Barolo wine, this is the wine that we tasted!

The Nebbiolo grape is also known as Barolo so you may or may not encounter that on the bottle when you're reading it (I had to look it up to make sure that Barolo was indeed the Nebbiolo grape). Craig tried these wines and admittedly was more descriptive in his descriptions of the wine. Now remember, Craig isn't usually a fan of red wine and recently dismissed the Shiraz! But he did not mind this wine and observed that it wasn't took oaky and a bit on the dry side. Interestingly enough, I didn't notice any oakiness taste even though I knew that this wine was in fact barreled. My taste buds are failing me.

Nebbiolo based wines can often take on tastes such as tar and roses and depending the particular region in the Piedmont, can have other tastes of rasperries, violets, tar, wild herbs and cherries. Like Craig noted, it is kind of dry and that is due to the Nebbiolo grape being very high in tannins (causing the puckering in your mouth and the feeling of dryness). Often, this wine is left to age a bit to lessen the tannins and make the wine drinkable.

Dinner that night was perogies (they were whole wheat). And in case you're not familiar with what perogies are, they are this fabulous Ukrainian dish that we are all very familiar with here in Alberta. And so easy to make!! You can either fry them up or boil them for a healthier choice. Add a little sour cream, some chives and bacon bits and you got yourself a meal. Sometimes it's really hard to cook for one person and when you have just come home from the gym after having worked out for an hour PLUS an hour of hot yoga (this is why I'm drinking wine in workout gear) and coming home at 8pm, the last thing you want to do is make a big meal. Perogies it is! Ciao!