Wine Review
Josh has been bugging me for a while to do wine reviews here, mainly for the purpose of being able to remember which ones I like and don’t like. I’ve been putting it off. Partly because I had no interest in appearing pretentious, but also because I halfway buy into that oenophilic pretension myself, and I don’t want to appear ignorant in public.
I have no idea how one is supposed to write about wine. I have no idea what the “legs” or “nose” of a wine represent (though I’ll probably look it up on Wikipedia as soon as I finish writing this), and I don’t have a particularly sensitive palate or any other ability that particularly qualifies me to talk about wine in any kind of authoritative way. But screw it, this is my blog, and as far as I know there aren’t any wine police lurking out there for me. -grin- So here goes: first review.
Huia: Marlborough. Sauvignon Blanc ’06. New Zealand. $16.
At first I didn’t like this one, especially in comparison with the other Sauvignons I’ve been tasting lately. It smelled bright, but thin. The first taste was very sharp and fairly acidic, with a tannic and almost gruyére taste. The sweet apple-y undertones that I look for in a Sauvignon were a muted aftertaste if they were there at all.
After sitting in a goblet for about fifteen minutes at room temperature, though, it mellowed a bit. The sweetness became more pronounced on the edges of my tongue, producing a better balanced body. A nice tingle on the tongue too. Still thin, though, and if it were in a blind taste test I’d guess it were more of a medium chardonnay than a sharp sauvignon. Maybe I’m a traditionalist – and as I said above I have nothing even approaching a sophisticated palate – but it tasted too raw for $16.
Rating: Just okay. I would buy it if I was in the mood for a chardonnay, but not otherwise.
August 19th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
hmm. “thin”?