Unfussy Wine Enthusiasts | Wine Reviews & Articles

This wine was provided to us and is one we drank on occasion when we lived in the United States.  That said, we have not tried the Woodbridge brand very much since we returned to Canada. We decided to have homemade pizza for dinner so we figured that this would be a good companion.  It was opened about 5 minutes before we ate and right off the bat we new it needed a little time to open up.  The first impressions revolved around having a LOT of oak flavours in this wine. The wine has a very plummy colour to it with a an unfiltered look to it but it has been filtered as far as we can tell.  It would be considered very dark in our minds.  Not a bad looking wine for Cab Sauv but not really remarkable either. The nose could be considered perfumed as it has an alcohol sensation with a lot of floral components as well as that oak sensation.  Okay there may be a leather or more to that point, a Corinthian leather note as well.  Interesting but agai...

This wine was provided to us and it is the red companion to the Sauvignon Blanc we tried about a month ago.  Check out our review of that wine here . This wine was opened about 15 minutes before we drank it and immediately it had very little in common with most of the Kiwi Pinot Noirs we have seen of late.  It is not the light and grassy smelling version we are used to drinking.  This wine is dark and smells big and beautiful.  We have seen Pinots like this from California and maybe France but not from NZ....not like this. Bottom line, the look of this wine is much, much darker than the usual Pinot Noir from New Zealand.  This wine from Central Otago, is cherry red with a slight amount of transparency but is not light in colour.  Super unique compared to the norm and super interesting. The nose is fantastic on this wine.  Exemplary.  Reserved in some ways but very much a fruity and robust smell with blackberry and plum but with a fragran...

We were unable to attend the 2012 Wine Blog Awards in Portland, Oregon this year but that doesn't mean we didn't follow along as best we could with Social Media and the like.  The awards honor Wine Bloggers from around the world as well as giving online wine writers the ability to congregate and chat about the industry in general. There were a number of Blogs that captured our attention but we wanted to show the list of the winners so we grabbed them from the Wine Blog Awards website (listed below): Best Blog Post of the Year  –  “Why do I Write about Wine”  by Evan Dawson, New York Cork Report Best New Wine Blog  –  Wine Julia  by Julia Crowley Best Original Video or Photography on a Wine Blog  –  WineOh.tv  by Monique Soltani Best Industry Wine Blog  –  The Gray Report  by W. Blake Gray Best Wine Reviews on a Wine Blog  –  Kens Wine Guide.com  by Ken Hoggins Best Writing on a Wine Blog  –...

We spent a lovely after work hour at our local wine bar Obladee  where we enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine, a nice Soave Classico and a Vinho Verde on the white side and Malbec and Rioja on the red.  The wine bar is a lovely place for an after work drink and with the weather we have been having we were extra lucky.  That nice end to the day got us thinking about what wine to have tonight and we decided to have a wine that we were recently provided. The 2010 Baron Philippe De Rothschild  Merlot retails for $14 locally which is a great price point if the wine is any good.  We reviewed the Chardonnay not long after we started the blog and were interested in trying another version of their wines and here we are after having been provided both the Merlot and the Pinot Noir (to be reviewed in the coming days). This wine we would consider to be medium bodied with a medium-dark look in the glass.  When held up to light it does allow some light through. ...

So we really like Portuguese wines.  We like the rustic nature of the reds and crisp and minerality of the whites.  We like Douro Tinto, Vinho Verde, and we like Dão wines.  We especially like the prices.  We have been fans of Portuguese wines for a while and in many ways the price and quality hit a ceiling when you get over $30....strange as that may sound.  We reviewed the Calabriga version not too long ago, check it out here .  This wine clocks in at a sale price of $14 down from the regular price of $16 which gets us off on the right foot.  This wine from Borges Wines  is part of the Dão Denominação de Origem Controlada (DOC) appellation.  It is a blend of Touriga-Nacional, Jaen, Alfrocheiro and Tinta-Roriz (no percentages given). In the glass it is a very dark wine....you can't see through it.  Call it Garnet or Black Cherry or any other colour that would indicate dark purple.  It foretells of the dark...

This is another wine that we were provided from Hardys that retails for $20 locally.  It is a blend of Riesling and Gewurztraminer that has an Aussie style to it which is to say thicker and a bit more tropical in the nose. We had this wine with sushi which was a pretty good pairing.  The crisp acidity and sugar in the wine helped balance some of the soya sauce and wasabi.  Overall, it was a good choice. The wine looked like a brighter version of most Rieslings we have tried.  We would call it pale golden.  Less golden than the picture on the left portrays.  As we mentioned it was also a thick wine that stuck to the glass, though the alcohol comes in at 11.0% which is our minds is fine. The nose was somewhat floral but definitely leaned towards the tropical notes of passion fruit and gooseberry.  There was a nice balance of fruit and sweetness on the nose and really it smells pretty nice. The flavours were predominately peach with a lemon-l...

This is another bottle that came to be in our possession from Tinhorn Creek in British Columbia.  We want to tell you more about how we came to have this wine but we are reluctant to give more details (for Tinhorn Creek's sake really).  Regardless you should check out the Free My Grapes website to learn more about the issues of buying Canadian wines in Canada. Back to the good stuff. This is another 14.8% wine from Sandra Oldfield, the winemaker and owner at Tinhorn Creek.  She does a masterful job at keeping what is a higher alcohol percentage from impeding the flavours in the wine.  This is a big wine, but not a boozy/hot wine.  Don't get us wrong, you can tell that it is more than 13% alcohol but it works well. The wine is very dark with the look of Welch's Grape Juice once in the glass.  It is thick and clings to the glass on the swirl.  Great looking wine. We didn't get the time to decant it as long as we would have liked but it re...

We were provided this wine which retails for $20 locally.  This Cab from Paso Creek  touts itself as being a 'Bold' wine and we can say without reservation that they are right.  We almost could have mistaken this wine for a Zinfandel it had that kind of body and weight. When we poured the wine into the decanter we hardly took notice of the colour, but when we went from decanter to glass.....wow.  This wine is dark, black as your hat, dark.  It has a very deep purple hue that is reminiscent of Malbec or something like that.  Can't see through it at all.  Really interesting colour.  They say on the bottle that the Paso Robles AVA in California has the widest temperature swings in the state which cause small clusters of tiny concentrated fruit.  We can certainly believe that if they are getting this type of intensity in their wines. The nose is dark stewed fruit with a lot of vanilla layered in there.  There is also fresh anise unde...

This wine from the Thomas Mitchell Wines was another discount purchase from the NSLC  where this wine is normally $17 locally it was on for $12.  Wicked awesome! The Marsanne grape is one we are not too familiar with but according to Wikipedia is a North Rhone variety often blended with Rousanne.  Duly noted. The first thing that stands out on this wine is the colour.  It is yellow.  Not pale yellow, but more like fluorescent yellow....crazy apple juice yellow.  It is like the most golden-y coloured wine we have seen in a long time.  Kind of like Aussie Chardonnay from the nineties.  However, it is not an oak bomb.  In fact, we can`t pick out anything oak related. The nose is fruity and a little bit funky.  There is something that makes this wine very unique and it might not be in the best way.  The bouquet starts out with apple and pear notes and transitions to being honey and then finishes with a bitter note. ...

We were provided this wine from Hardys and to be quite honest we have had this one a few years ago or so and it was not a hit.  At that time, as we recall it, the wine did not have a lot going for it and it was one of those wines that we probably finished off under duress (but we did finish it....of course).  So, we had a little bit of trepidation in trying this one again.  At $12.50 locally it is not a huge financial commitment but we were hopeful that the Quality-Price Ratio is going to be better this time around. Lucky for us....it is. This is quite a nice wine with a lot of softness and a surprising amount of balance....we were really floored. The colour of the wine reflects a lot of deep ruby and dark cherry tones.  It is a little on the thin side but wow, it looks really nice. The smells coming off the wine are pretty bold and reflect a lot of vanilla, some bing cherry and even a touch of pipe tobacco.  It packs a wallop when you stick yo...