#6- Furmint

In Alberta, a Furmint wine is hard to find. You're extremely limited as to who imports it into the province and who stocks it so I was pleasantly surprised to find a Furmint wine at Glenora Liquor. Now, for a wine that is so hard to find, I wasn't sure what to expect but let's just say this- the price tag for this wine surprised the heck out of me.

I was mentally preparing myself to pay a pretty penny for this wine. Boy was I wrong. Not only was this wine affordable, it's been the cheapest bottle of wine I've bought so far for this project. It cost me a whole $10.99! I immediately thought, this wine isn't going to be that good if it's that cheap. My thinking changed from "this must be one hell of a wine that no one can afford to import it" to "maybe there's a reason no one imports this wine and it costs less than $12 with tax." Happy to have found it and overly optimistic, I was ready to try this new wine.

The bottle I purchased is Tokaji Furmint, a Hungarian white table wine. This is where I wish I could read Hungarian because I have no clue what winery this wine is actually from. Tokaji is the region in Hungary the Furmint grapes are grown. I'm sure it's somewhere on the bottle but everything I plug into Google doesn't give me the winery or winery name. Perhaps I'm supposed to know this from the crown at the top of the label? Anyway, you have the picture of it so that's the best I can do here until someone who reads Hungarian can tell me more.

We drank this wine for my my dad's birthday (he's kind enough to share Valentine's with us) which was also the crazy weekend that included the Olympics and Family Day so a busy wine drinking weekend full of red and white and family.

The meal was a good one to go with our white, a nice homemade lasagna! Okay, so it wasn't homemade at all but still, the point is there was a lot of food to go with our Furmint. What I remember most about this meal is how big my piece of lasagna was. I had every intention of only eating half of it only to have licked the plate clean. Thank goodness I exercise regularly or this weekend could have been the end of me.So back to the wine. In a word- tasteless. It didn't taste like anything at all to me. It's not memorable, there's no discernible taste that jumps out at you. It's just-- wine. I was so disappointed. All the work I'd put in to finding this darn wine and I didn't like it. Craig on the other hand, didn't mind it at all. This is supposed to be a very rich wine with a fiery taste and similar to a Chardonnay but I just didn't find anything that stood out.

I'm just not sure what more I can say other than this wine is not worth it, even for $10.99. Don't bother to drink this wine unless you're a) a lover of the Chardonnay or b) you too are trying what Craig and I are attempting. I'm really hoping our next wine is much better and more satisfying. Next week, we're trying an Arinto!

#5- Merlot

Happy Valentine's Day and happy birthday to my father as well. Pretty soon I will be heading out to celebrate the day and try yet another new wine, but first, time to write about the Merlot I tried a couple of a week ago (and a bonus for this blog as well--a second Merlot for comparison).

So it wasn't my intent to compare two Merlot wines but the timing of the Olympics made it possible. The Merlot wine I chose was a California wine from the Barefoot Winery. This winery won several awards in 2007 including Wine Brand of the Year. The Merlot grape is the most prominent grape in France and is one of the most accessible types of wine here in Canada. Practically every country in the wine making world produces a Merlot.

I had one of my closest friends Michelle over for dinner to watch our guilty pleasure, the Bachelor. We cracked open the Merlot which accompanied our pasta dinner (I'm sensing a pattern here with me and red wine...)In any case, we settled in to our evening and as you can see, Michelle was enjoying a quiet evening at my house (the couch was her best friend this evening). I have had many evenings (including last night where we had the most amazing fondue) at her house enjoying bottle after bottle of wine. Michelle and her husband Jeff appreciate and enjoy a great bottle of wine so they're great partners when experimenting with new wines.

The Merlot is a wine that I couldn't stand when I first started drinking wine. It took me many many attempts before I finally started to appreciate Merlot but now, I am usually a fan of the grape.

Drinking the wine, the first thing I noticed was house velvety smooth it was. I wanted to leave it my mouth and just enjoy the texture as the wine swirled around my mouth. Sips later, I really noticed the taste of the boysenberries. Michelle too captured the taste though we were both left guessing if anyone could actually taste the supposed chocolate flavour. But we did manage to pair this wine with an excellent brownie (and it's so true, red wine and chocolate go very well together).

When I managed to get Craig to finally try the Merlot, he sat there for a few minutes without saying much. And then out of nowhere, his blurt "berries. I can taste berries. It's good." Succinct and well said. Craig did an excellent job finishing up the bottle. We quickly gave my mother a taste but not being a fan of the merlot, she had a sip and that was it.

Being die hard Olympic couch athletes, our evening wasn't complete without trying the Jackson & Triggs official wine of the 2010 Olympics. There are two types but tonight we took on the Merlot to compare it to our Barefoot one.

The Olympic wine however, only gets the silver medal while Barefoot gets the gold. The Olympic wine tasted young and more acidic than I would have preferred. I actually found it hard to swallow at first and had to let it breathe for several more minutes before finding it acceptable to drink. Craig on the other hand had no problems drinking it right away and liked it as much as the Barefoot. But it is my blog and so I say the Barefoot wins.

And for a white wine drinker, Craig is sure doing a heck of a job putting those glasses of red wine away. Our next wine to try is a harder to find grape- the Furmint.