Tsantali - Kanenas

Producer: Tsantali
Name: Kanenas
Vintage: 2006
Varietal: Mavroudi, Syrah
Region: Mavroudi, Greece
Price: ~ $25

Haven't had a lot of Greek wine but this Kanenas by Tsantali seemed to be popular at the tasting. Tsantali offers a variety of Greek wines from all over northern Greece. Kanenas comes from a northern area that has deep "argyllic" and dark red soil and hot summers with cool northern winds. This is really shown in the colour of the wine as it exhibits a deep red. The bouquet on this 2006 has ripe cherries, slightly earthy and is highlighted by spice. On the palate the spice and pepper notes come out more followed by more cherry and dark berries. The full body of the wine finishes nice and long.

The winery almost borders Turkey so It was nice to try something new like this. Greece doesn't often come to mind when you think of a nice wine for dinner but I could really see this going well with a lamb shank with Greek spices or with another Greek-style dish. Seriously, who doesn't love a good gyros? Or saganaki? Mmm... fried cheese...

J

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Rocca delle Macie - Chianti Classico Riserva

Producer: Rocca delle Macie

Name: Chianti Classico Riserva

Region: Tuscany, Italy

Appellation: Chianti Classico

Vintage: 2004

Price: ~ $23

Okay let me first start by saying what shitty pictures these are. I think that by the time I took them I was already a few glasses deep and thought they looked blurry but it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Apparently they actually were blurry... (iPhone where are you?!)

This was a nicely bold chianti from the old world. The bouquet smelled of forward spice with a lingering ripe black cherry scent. On the palate the wine was equally quite bold. It had a hearty full body that was complex and intriguing and carried flavours of chocolate, bark, leather and subtle notes of cherry. The whole wine wrapped up with a long dry finish. Mmm...

In the terrible pictures you can see the shape of a silver medal award for Wine Access's International Value Wine Awards.

In other news the Golden Globes were yesterday and Tarantino was robbed of best picture yet again! In 2009 Inglorious loses to blue aliens. In 1994 Pulp Fiction loses to a retard from the south who farms shrimp... "Lieutenant Dan! Lieutenant Dan!"... bah! Drives me nuts...

J

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Rosemount - Show Reserve

Gawd!! I forgot to attach the images! Well what do you expect after hours of tasting wine!

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Rosemount - Show Reserve

Producer: Rosemount

Name: Show Reserve

Varietal: Grenache, Shiraz, Mourvedre

Vintage: 2006

Region: McLaren Vale, Australia

So Leibovitz is $25M in debt and she's got some old photos of Tiger taken a while ago... sounds like perfect timing Annie...

Over the holidays my aunt gave me a few bottles of wine to try. Which is great because she was diagnosed with stage three cervical cancer that moved into her liver and she was not expected to be with us. Fortunately, against the odds, she responded to the treatment and was able to join us for the holidays! Things are looking better each day and she's on her way to full recovery. Very frickin' happy!

Anyway, the wine that she gave me was a Rosemount that I haven't tried before. It has a velvety thick texture and a dark rich purple colour. The bouquet smells of rich cassis, black currants and cherries with an intense brown sugar aroma. The palate tastes of dark fruit and subtle spice and oak with a surprising complexity and good integration of the varietals. Wasn't expecting this to be decent because there are so many crappy Australian wines out now, but I mean, for the price it's fairly good.

J

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Spy Valley - Gewurztraminer

Producer: Spy Valley

Varietal: Gewurztraminer

Vintage: 2008

Region: Marlborough, New Zealand

Price: ~ $20

Merry belated Christmas! If you don't celebrate Christmas don't expect a "Happy Holidays" from me. In fact, you probably won't get a genuine Merry Christmas from me anyway since I'm pretty sure I've stopped celebrating the actual religious holiday of Christmas. Festivus anyone?

More Spy Valley... the bouquet on this gewurztraminer smells of cinnamon, passion fruit and honey with a slight hint of cloves. The rep behind the table said that he could sense a bit of melon too but couldn't get the cloves. A nicely refreshing change to my reds, the palate wasn't too different from the bouquet. It tasted of cloves, cinnamon, honey and a bit of pepper and had a silky clean finish.

So it turns out that 1/3 of all sick days are requested on Mondays. Also, January seems to incur more sick days than any other month. I think I'm feeling a bit under the weather...

Happy new year!

J

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