1994 Kruger Rumpf Riesling

Yes, you read that right - this wine is from 1994! Stephen picked this wine up at the Grapevine sale a few years ago (wow, time flies...). I think he couldn't tell if it would be bad, because it's 15 years old, or maybe that it would be delicious because it has been aging. I guess we have been hesitant to open it, not knowing what to expect, but it was finally time. An interesting thing appeared when we tore open the foil on top...

I don't know if you can see the cork that well, but there was some definite funk or gunk going on! Gross! We opened the wine up anway and tried it and it was not terrible as I expected. But, it was not really good. It tasted pretty flat, a bit sour (although not vinegary), and just overall unappealing. I was a little concerned that the wine had gone bad and would make me sick, although I'm not sure if that actually happens. In the end, we tried to drink it but ended up throwing out most of the bottle :(. There is really no need to drink unappealing wine.

Fredericksburg Trip

Stephen and I went to Fredericksburg last Friday to pick up our February wine club shipment from Becker Vineyards. Along the way we stopped at Texas Hills Winery, which is probably one of my favorites in Fredericksburg. They have a really great kick butt cab, orange moscato, and shiraz. They have a $5 tasting fee, which is refunded if you buy any bottle, so we usually end up doing that. This time we bought a half sized bottle of moscato that I thought my mom would like.

We also stopped at the Lost Creek tasting room, where we met a very nice guy who knew a ton about wine. He was the buyer for the tasting room and his job was to visit all the Texas wineries and decide which wines to sell there. How amazing is that! We ended up buying a somewhat expensive bottle of wine from Perissus, which I had never even heard of. It was SO good, more on that in a later post. Ok, already we have bought 2 bottles and we haven't even picked up the 3 we came for!

Whenever we go to Fredericksburg we try to find a new place to try, so this time we wanted to check out the William Chris winery, which is somewhat new. Apparently one of the guys from Woodrose Winery works there now and when we walked in, he actually recognized us! We ended up not staying and tasting their wines because they were 4 tastes for $10. Who do they think they are? Napa?

We also stopped at Pedernales Cellars, which is another place we had never been. This place was a little pricey too, at $12 for 9 wines. Honestly, there was nothing amazing there and we ended up just wasting our money :(.

We decided to save Becker for last, so we went into town to our favorite store that we call "the sample place". I don't even remember the name of this store but there are seriously HUNDREDS of samples of mustards, jellies, dips, salsas, hot sauces, etc. We filled up, checked out another wine store in town with samples, and then headed back out to Becker to pick up our wines.

(here is a picture of us in front of Becker 3 years ago! Wow!)

The cool thing about being in the Becker wine club is that you get to taste their wines for free when you come. Usually, there is a $10 fee for 6 tastes, so we end up getting $20 worth of tastings for free. We share each tasting also, so that way we each get to taste 12 wines. I was a little disappointed to learn that although wine club members save 20% on their wines, there is a $5 processing fee added on to each shipment. Also, we get 3 wines every 3 months, and I am usually charged between $50 - 70, which seems pretty high for only 3 wines. What they usually do is put on of their expensive ones in there and then a medium priced one and a cheaper one.

Here is what we got in our February shipment:

We got an albarino (meh), a barbera (yum!) and the dark one in the middle is a reserve merlot. I was a little disappointed again, because I probably would not have picked those wines and yet I had to pay for them. On our way back home Stephen and I discussed probably quitting the Becker wine club, since we have tried everything they have multiple times and are getting a bit tired of it. Also, we have just accumulated so many wines over the years that we want to only be adding wines that we truly love.

Printhe Shiraz Viognier

This shiraz is from my Christmas wine pack. We have really not kept up with drinking one a month, but at this point we will just stretch it over 2 years instead of 1. I was very excited to try this wine, because Printhie makes a chardonnay which is one of the ONLY chardonnays I like. Just like the chardonnay, this shiraz has some viognier mixed in (5%). I liked this wine a lot, but I couldn't taste the viognier at all (no suprise, really). I immediately thought it had a creaminess to it, and an almost vanilla flavor. It was pretty sweet as well, and an overall pleasure to drink.

One interesting note though: this wine had a ton of sediment! Look at all this sediment when the bottle was finished...

Battle of the Blancs

So I decided to do a side by side tasting and open 2 bottles of sauvignon blancs at the same time and compare them. We decided on 2 random bottles we had, a Kato New Zealand one and a Cameron Hughes wine from the Russian River Valley. Stephen poured us each a small glass of both and we tasted them. The interesting part is that I didn't know which glass was which. Here were my thoughts:

Wine #1:

• pale yellow
• bad smell
• watery flavor, not very good on first taste
• more of an alcoholic burn
• more drinkable though, like a watered down lemonade
• could possibly be confused with a pinot grigio
• after drinking it a bit, I prefer this one since it's simpler

Wine #2:

• dark, bright yellow
• green pepper smell
• very strong taste - maybe too strong with food
• very distinct sauvignon blanc
• smells like a pickle, vinegary

Wine #1 turned out to be the Cameron Hughes wine, and Wine # 2 was the Kato. I definitely liked #2 a lot better, which just goes to show that not all Cameron Hughes wines are terrific. I must say though, that we both tried these wine a day or two later and I thought the CH one was better than it was on the first day.