Unfussy Wine Enthusiasts | Wine Reviews & Articles

This is just a quick post to wish everyone out there a fantastic New Year's Eve and a great start to 2013.  We are going to be intermittent yet again starting the New Year but for those readers who follow us regularly stick with us.  We will have much more to offer in the coming year and maybe a change or two.  There will be lots of changes for us as we enter the New Year. Our New Year's Eve will be a relatively quiet one and we are keeping the '88 Chateau Palmer in the bottle for now.  That said, we should be providing new information and hopefully fun stuff to our readers. May you have a wonderful time tonight and not too hard of a day tomorrow.  :) PS - Feel free to tell us if you do 'Open THAT Bottle' tonight. Happy New Year!! Keep on tasting! Chris & Shannon

We must say that we are strict amateurs at this wine writing game.  We have chased this experience as a labour of love but we have become more and more aware that this truly is a business beyond our sheltered little Blog.  Over the last week or so, we have been following an unfolding story that has come up online about Canada's own Wine Blogging Maven Natalie MacLean.  For those unfamiliar, she is the author of a couple of Wine Drinking related books namely "Red, White, and Drunk All Over" and "Unquenchable".  Natalie has appeared on many TV talk shows discussing wine and being, well....a personality.  She has a Blog, a Mobile App, and has been given a number of wine writing awards.  All the while she presents herself as a simple wine lover who wants to share her love of wine with the world.  Fair enough. Well, the reality is that she is a shrewd business woman who understands very clearly that there is a market for her talents.  She looks to ...

This article is our 200th post since beginning our Blog in late November 2011 and we are so glad it is coming just before the start of a New Year.  This Holiday Season has been a busy one with a lot of preparation for family and friends to enjoy our version of Holiday Cheer, which of course revolves around wine.  This year we knew we would be having Christmas Dinner outside the house so we had to make sure that the wine selections were good ones. For Christmas Dinner, we decided to have a Whitehaven Pinot Noir from New Zealand which we received as a gift.  Once we saw it we immediately knew that it would be part of the celebrations where lots of Turkey and Pork were going to be served.  It was a luscious Pinot Noir with a nice berry ripeness to it underscored by mild vegetal and green pepper notes; which we loved.  We have had their Savignon Blanc recently which we really enjoyed as well.  We also selected a Blufeld Riesling for the same dinner selecti...

This Chardonnay was provided to us and is the vintage that followed our review here . As a follow-up to the 2010, we wanted to see how this one stacked up.  In the 2010 we found it to be a lot closer to a New World Chardonnay for a French wine.  This one was no different.  There is a lot of oak at play in both years and this was not a huge departure from the 2010.  The back label hasn't changed either and they still speak of hazelnut and toast.  We can get both, more hazelnuts than toast but toasty it is.  Very enjoyable. The look of the wine is a lot more golden in colour than the 2010 but there are still greenish tones in there.  We enjoyed the look as far as it was clear and bright but this is pretty standard stuff. The nose is clearly honeyed and has an oaky and peachy base.  It is really an attractive smell.  There might be a bit of a musty smell, but not in the bad wine being off way, more of a grandma's basement smell. ...

This wine was picked up on a work related trip to our neighbouring province of New Brunswick.  We have not seen this wine listed locally but at a regular price of $14 it was too good to pass up. We have a soft spot for Spanish wine, and even more of a soft spot for reasonably price Spanish wine.  This one was checking off a lot of boxes before we even opened it. The nose was very typically Rioja with lots of big ripe fruit and vanilla with earthy tones from time spent in oak.  The stand out that really hit us was raw dark cocoa with maybe a cedar note.  This was a real pleasure to smell. This is a super dark wine...midnight dark.  It is supposedly a blend of Tempranillo, Garnacha, Graciano, and Mazuelo of some arrangement but whatever it is, it makes for a dark wine.  There look to be some floaters in the glass but we are not sure if that is just bottle debris or crystals or if the wine is just unfiltered either way you can't se...

This is the sister wine to the Minervois we reviewed a couple of weeks ago.  We decided not to wait to try the Languedoc.  This wine was more of a head scratcher when it comes to what might be in it.  There is not an easily found description of the varieties in this one.  If it is a Corbieres, then it would have some combination of Syrah / Grenache / Mourvèdre in there.  On the Gerard Bertrand website there is a Corbieres at 40% Syrah - 40 % Grenache - 20% Mourvèdre, but that does not look to be the 'Art De Vivre' label.  So, we are kind of guessing. In comparison to the Minervois we had this wine is much darker with some inky notes. This one is on the purple side and quite a light rim in the glass.  We would again say medium looking wine, call it comme ci, comme ça. When you stick your nose in the glass we get some pretty strange stuff.  Welsh's grape juice crossed with burnt rubber.  Strange indeed, but it works.  This on...

So, it has been twelve days since our last post....very slack.  We have been in the midst of work commitments and holiday preparations.  No excuse, but definitely something we want to remedy with lots of holiday cheer. Tonight's wine was a purchase from the NSLC Wine Festival in September.  We have a couple of them left from our original stock and this one was a stand out at the show. From Graffigna Wines , this Malbec is a nice version of Argentina's signature grape.  We liked it a lot at the time of purchase but a few months on we wanted to see if we were still into it. As expected, this is a dark wine through and through.  We love the look of Malbec on a good day but this one is great.  Deep purple colours are the order of the day with a thick skim in the glass.  The legs run pretty slowly but at 14.5% alcohol can't say it is a surprise. The nose is very, very oaky and we get a lot of dark fruit and stone fruit, maybe black currents and p...

This wine was a purchase from this year's Port of Wines Festival here in Nova Scotia.  It was a bit of a stand out at the French table where we were tasting wines that ranged from $15 to $150.  This one mainly stood out because it was $16 and good.  For those who are not familiar with what Minervois actually means (and we really aren't either - oh those wacky French and their 'rules') it is a blend wine made of Carignan (which can account for no more than 40% of the wine), Grenache, Lledoner Pelut, Mourvedre, and Syrah grapes.  How much of each are in this one....who knows. In the glass the wine is a medium colour, not too light, not too dark if that makes sense. It is more red than purple in a lot of ways so we will call it a crimson colour.  It is a nice colour for a glass of red wine.  It is dark enough to block a lot of the light coming through the glass but not completely. The nose is somewhat unique in the sense that it has a lot of fruit...