The Cocktail Hour: Vino Tasting For Lent

It's the Lenten flavor where many forego difficult liquor for 40 days.  In the meantime, we’re tasting wines as well as beers for this week's Cocktail Hour.

This week, nosotros gustatory modality a white as well as a red…just similar you’d teach from your vino lodge shipment!

The white is the Thornton 2008 Gewürztraminer.  Thornton is a winery inwards Temecula, California that is best known for their sparkling wines.  Temecula is a pop house to view due to its proximity to Los Angeles, Orange County, as well as San Diego which are roughly all equidistant from it.  It’s a hot, dry out expanse sitting southward of Lake Elsinore as well as northward of Escondido off of Interstate fifteen inland as well as over the mountains from Camp Pendleton on the coast.

My gripe with the expanse is that they’ve succumbed to the Napa Valley disease…charging a lot for tasting, as well as charging a lot to a greater extent than for their wines fifty-fifty though  you tin purchase them at diverse retailers for less…because swarms of tourist descend upon the expanse each weekend.

That grievance aside, they do brand roughly practiced wines here.

This Gewürztraminer is an example.  From grapes grown inwards the area, which is known to a greater extent than for reds than whites, this pale, greenishly yellowish vino pours similar syrup into the cup.  Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 sniff reveals a citrusy tart, sugariness olfactory organ with a rigid pear scent along with hints of honeysuckle as well as peach.  It smells similar it’s going to live on roughly other tarty, young white.

Drinking is roughly other matter.  Like the pour, there’s a syrupy gustatory modality as well as oral cavity feel.  It’s non almost every bit fruity or tart every bit the olfactory organ would suggest.  The gustatory modality is a nice, mature balanced flavor with hints of love as well as apple.

Easily the best white vino I’ve had inwards at to the lowest degree 8 months. 

At the winery, this volition gear upwards you lot dorsum $22.  The Wine of the Month Club has it for $14.99, patch Tom’s Farms…alongside the fifteen inwards Corona…has a 2004 for $9.99.  I’d bet a buck that they’d also bring this vintage for less than the winery cost too.

For the red, we’re going with a vino we’ve tasted many, many times as well as picked upwards patch filming our California’s Hidden Wine Country video a duo of weeks ago.  It’s the Centro Basco Red from Galleano Winery inwards Mira Loma, California.

Here inwards the Cucamonga Valley it’s hot, dry out as well as dusty…which makes it perfect for bold, carmine wines similar zinfandel.  Centro Basco is a rattling practiced Basque eatery non every bit good far away inwards Chino.  Galleano produces their trouble solid wine, a carmine tabular array vino blended with their zinfandel grapes.

The olfactory organ is peppery with hints of plum as well as currant.  It’s a dark, inky pour into the glass.

That pepper olfactory organ carries over into the taste.  It’s spicy with tastes of cherry as well as a tannic, oak smoothness.  Slightly pucker.  Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 perfect complement to the big, bold dinners served at Centro Basco.

There are alone 2 places on this globe to teach it.  As the trouble solid carmine at Centro Basco (where they telephone telephone it a Claret) at $8 a bottle or hither at the winery for $5 a bottle.  Yes, those prices are non typos.

You tin also teach a coupon for a costless drinking glass with your dinner when you lot bring a costless tasting at the winery.

It’s a much amend vino than the cost suggests as well as ane of the truthful bargains inwards vino but you’ll bring to go to the Inland Empire to teach it.  Definitely worth the trip, peculiarly if that includes dinner at Centro Basco.

Cheers!

Darryl