Unfussy Wine Enthusiasts | Wine Reviews & Articles

Happy New Year!! So, it has been a pretty dry 2013 overall in the Unfussy Wine household with baby arriving but we are hoping that 2014 will bring a new commitment to wine enjoyment and solid food for little Morgan. :) We will be spending a very quiet New Year's Eve (NYE) as a family and we may make it to midnight and then again we may not.  There is also no guarantee that wine of any kind will be consumed....but ya never know. So, for all those who will be enjoying the transition to 2014 in style we thought we would put in front of you our Ten Ten Wines to go with you tonight as you enjoy your celebrations.  PLUS, if you are attending at a residence that is not yours it is always polite to bring something with you and yes we are talking to you twenty-somethings.  Be a good party guest and don't just BYOB.  So, without further adieu, the list starting at 10: 10. Aussie Shiraz - this is a great starter red for those white wine drinkers in the house and very...

Intriga Cabernet Sauvignon We bought this wine at the NSLC Port of Wines Festival in September.  We remembered it as a stand out and it was an award winner.  From the Maipo Valley the Intriga winery has evidently been in operation since 1865. In the glass it is a very dark wine.  The legs on the swirl are very long and show all of the 14.5% alcohol.  This is purple wine.  We could come up with a garnet or ruby but it is really just dark purple. This wine has a really warm nose with spice, black currents, and violets dominating.  There is also a good amount of oak in the nose.  When we say oak we mean oak.  There isn't any vanilla to coincide with it just wood.  That stands to reason with the 34 months the wine spent in oak.  If the nose had less of the other notes this would be a downer but as it stands it smells pretty nice. On the tongue this is a bold, very dry, very tannic wine.  The mid-palate is where we had...

We were provided this wine from Nederburg Wines  and it was a late addition to a Spinach and Cheese Ravoli with Tomato Sauce menu.  Once opened it smelled surprisingly (well not entirely surprising) like South African Pinotage.  The coffee and chocolate notes were front and centre on the nose but funnily enough it disappeared once the wine had been opened for a while. The wine is dark and it has a real thickness in a glass.  It looks like Shiraz if you can put it that way but it definitely shows long, slow legs when you swirl it.  We'll call it typical but that is really just to give it a description.  Overall...we'll say, it is crimson as expected. Once the Pinotage notes faded the blackberries and cherries came through and it had more of that Shiraz nose we would expect from the Australian version.  That is a good thing on the nose.  The website mentions subtle vanilla but it's more woody than vanilla. The blackberries still hang a...

Saw this linked on WineBusiness.com and had to share it for the Season. It is actually pretty good and frankly, just can't that beat out of my head.... Damn that catchy Robin Thicke. It says they are producing an actual video so we will keep our eyes peeled for that. Happy Holidays, y'all! Keep on tasting, Chris & Shannon

We are having a rich roasted lamb dinner tonight and thought that a big bold wine was in order.  When we grabbed the bottle it looked familiar and upon checking we had the 2008 last year around this time (review here ).  Like the 2008, the 2010 was a purchase from the NSLC Wine Festival in September.  Don't judge us but we are gonna recycle a bit of that review for time's sake because it still applies. From Graffigna Wines , this Malbec is a nice version of Argentina's signature grape.  As expected, this is a dark wine with deep purple colours and a thick skim in the glass. Once again the nose is very oaky and we get a lot of dark fruit and stone fruit, maybe black currents and plums.  Last time there was a cocoa undercurrent as well as a little smoke. All this still applies to the 2010. Just like in 2008, the 2010 has lots of violets and blackberries in the glass.  That said, this time around it is a very elegant balance of tannins, fruit, an...

This was the very first wine we tried at this year's NSLC Port of Wines Festival. We walked into the space for the VIP tasting and we were handed a taste of this wine.  At the time, it was really great.  We really like the combination of Chardonnay with Viognier added in because it always seems to add a complexity that elevates both grapes.  This wine comes in at 60% Chardonnay and 40% Viognier.  It's a great balance between the two. As we would expect, this wine has a golden colour that makes this a very interesting looking wine.  It looks like a Fall wine which is perfect.  Great clarity and even some softness in the golden hue.  The nose has a solid butterscotch and lemon wrapped up with some pear.  It is really a unique and interesting smell.  The lemon makes it a familiar smell but the butterscotch and pear add a complexity that works. The flavours start with candied lemon peel with a bit of heat applied from the alcohol. ...

The child has barely hit his crib so we have so little time to do this but we loved this wine and felt like we needed to get a post out.  This wine is really great.  We had it with some sushi and it was a nice pairing.  As a 2013 it is a really great indication of a great year in NZ.  We picked this up as an impulse purchase on our follow up trip to the NSLC for the wines we neglected to buy at the Port of Wines Festival. OK, OK, OK running out of time. Super clear wine with a very pale yellow colour.  Almost green but nice looking. Really nice bouquet with that typical tropical fruit nose.  Papaya and mango with a little starfruit and green apple.  Delicious. The flavour profile was all the good things that we love about Kiwi Sauv Blanc.  Crisp acidity in balance with luscious tart fruit.  Yet somehow, this just seems a touch better when you see that it is $19 regular price currently on for $16 locally.  Awesome.  So, her...

This post is way overdue considering we attended the Festival on September 28th but such is life.  We absolutely relish attending this event each year.  In fact we have attended every year since we returned from living in the US in 2005.  This year's event was VERY different for us.  Our son was born at the end of August which made it a very challenging decision to attend. Shannon was torn about leaving him with his grandmother right up to the week before the Festival.  So, once she decided that it would be a go I went and purchased our tickets to the Saturday afternoon Grand Tasting which is by far our favorite session to attend.  It is always busy but it is during the day and you tend to find it a manageable crowd versus the evening sessions where, let's be honest, it becomes partly a nightclub.  When we were in our 20's that was absolutely a plus...not so much now. So, tickets are purchased and not two hours later the phone rings and a nice l...

Courtesy Wine-Searcher.com The blogging time allotment is seriously hard to find with a child in the house.  So, once again this will be a short and sweet review.  This is a wine from Peter Dennis Wines  and it was an award winner at this year's NSLC Port of Wines Festival.  It retails for $24.79 locally and is worth every penny. It was an early taster at the show and a memorable one.  Extremely well made for the price point.  It is a super dark wine.  So much so there is no light passing through that glass.  We would call it a black cherry colour and a nice looking wine. It has a bold nose with lots of vanilla and cedar.  The smells are blackberry/blueberry juice with a really luscious bouquet.  Underneath all of that there is a caramel undertone that smells awesome. On the palate you get a very round mouthfeel that finishes smoothly.  Again, a well made wine.  The flavours of cherries and blackberries dominate ...

This will be a short review as we have a very upset child in the house. A glass of wine earlier made for a delay in his dinner.  That said, it was such a nice wine we wanted to get this on the Blog. Barbera Da Vine is an extremely dark red wine which is very thick in the glass on the swirl.  There are very slow legs and this is almost reminiscent of Malbec in colour.  Very dark wine. The nose is strong with deep notes of violets and plum.  It is a bold wine with oak and stone fruit firmly implanted in the bouquet.  Really delicious, fantastic really. There is a roundness to the wine that is belies the pricetag of $15 locally. We would say the QPR on this wine is extremely high.  This wine would not be surprising to be $30.  The wine is has a a very bold mouthfeel with firm tannins and lots of sour cherry notes.  This is pretty much a 0 on the sweetness scale.  Just a hint at the start of the palate but a very balance finish that go...

Courtesy palmbay.com So. it's Saturday night and Morgan has done his eating for this evening and we figured it would be a good opportunity to do a quick wine tasting with our dinner.  We started with a good ol' New Orleans Boiled Shrimp and finished with Scallops poached in the Shrimp Boil liquid and Squash Risotto.  Since we were having something a little spicy we figured something with a bit of residual sugar might work and we were right. We were provided this wine earlier in the Summer and had wanted to try it when the weather was warmer but it was a nice day so all good.  This is a German Pinot Grigio and we were fairly certain that it would be on the off-dry end of the spectrum and that was perfect with dinner. In the glass the wine looks quite clear and it portrays itself as being a crisp looking wine and overall that kind of holds up.  There are bubbles in the glass as well.  We kind of like some of these off-dry whites to have a little sp...

We are considering making an appearance at this year's NSLC Port of Wines Festival which is featuring the wines of Italy.  It really is the most wonderful time of the year.  However, should we decide to attend, it will be a vastly different experience from previous years.  Lots of sip/spit/dump....and while that makes us sad in a lot of different ways we will undoubtedly have a better tasting experience and our babysitter and child will also appreciate that. It brings up an interesting question. We have sampled a good number of different wines over the last few years (especially at this festival).  Many bottles, grape varieties, regions, countries and on it goes.  We don't consider ourselves wine snobs by any stretch of the imagination but we have begun to develop certain, shall we say, preferences.  These preferences are not really a price equation but more a quality equation.  We have been kinder than most to some wines but we feel like ther...

Shannon's first wine review post-birth of our son Morgan.  He is a healthy baby boy and she wants to keep it that way so she is having a minimal glass between feedings.  To her it is a moral victory to be back in the land of wine tasting. It's good to have her back even if it is on a part time basis.  Hopefully, our volume of reviews/posts will start to increase again.  Thank goodness the pressure is off of me....whew. We purchased this wine while she was on the bench at Cristall Wine Merchants back in late-Winter or early-Spring.  We love Mencia so we bought this one and another from the Bierzo region which we will review at a later date.  This one is from the Castilla y Leon region in the NW of Spain not far from Bierzo. While we would probably consider this a medium bodied wine but it would be on the heavier side of medium.  This is a pretty dark wine and we would call the colour crimson with a mahogany rim around the edge. The body kind o...

So, I have gotten this idea from somewhere that we should lay down a nice bottle of age-worthy wine to enjoy with the kid when he turns 19 (legal age here in Nova Scotia).  The challenge is: 1) Not spending the kid's college fund on the wine. 2) Finding a great representation of the 2013 vintage (either Northern or Southern Hemisphere). 3) Trying to foresee if the kid will actually even be remotely interested in drinking a stupid bottle of old wine with his lame parents (if they even use the term lame in 19 years). Regardless, we are trying to figure out which wine might to the trick.  First or second growth Bordeaux or Burgundy don't match point 1 so they are out.  Given what we have found out about the harvest in the Southern Hemisphere, it looks really good.  Maybe really good Argentinean Malbec or Aussie Cab Sauv or Shiraz? The Northern Hemisphere is a few weeks away from being in full harvest mode.  But, there are early indications of good things...

This guy is just plain cool...a la Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World.  We should all try to be this debonair when talking about wine: Now we really want a glass of Paso Robles Sauvignon Blanc....sigh. There is actually a whole YouTube Channel talking about different grapes called PasoRoblesWine .  We may need to watch more. Keep on tasting! Chris & Shannon

A while back we started drinking and liking Pinotage from South Africa.  It is an earthy wine that tends to have coffee and chocolate tendencies in the nose and the palate.  Of the many, many types of wines out there Pinotage tends to have a tell-tale flavour profile that we can usually pick out of a crowd.  Then comes along this wine....Shannon smelled it to confirm my thoughts on this wine. We were provided this wine from Two Oceans  which is a Shiraz but has all the makings of a Pinotage.  At slightly over $12 this is a true value wine. This is a medium bodied wine which is slightly on the thinner side of the spectrum in the glass.  Fairly dark red, but definitely not a thick wine.  If you said it was Aussie Shiraz we wouldn't be surprised. The nose is where the Pinotage notes start coming to the forefront.  The coffee notes hit you right away and make us feel like this is not a Shiraz at all.  There is some fruit for sure but...

Harvest Wines & Spirits is a local private retailer that has a really nice collection of wine in their shop along with some good spirits and local/imported beers.  To promote the business and to add some levity to what can be a stuffy business, they have produced some promo videos with humorous slant to them.  The star of the videos is Jonathan Wilson who is the Director of Wine at Harvest (we think/are pretty sure) and he does a great job. Give em a watch: Maybe we should get into Video....hmmmmm. Keep on tasting! Chris & Shannon

This wine was an impulse purchase while buying one of our favorite American Beers here in town a while back and as for tasting this....Shannon felt like I could use a drink.  Thanks Sweetie. We had found out that Premier Wine & Spirits  was selling the Brooklyn Brewery's Beers of which their Brooklyn Lager is a fave.  Our most memorable instance of drinking Brooklyn Lager was on tap at the Brooklyn Bridge Park during a trip to NYC. We picked up this wine while buying a six pack.   Mayu  is from the Elqui Valley in Chile and comes in at $15 locally. The looks of this wine are definitely what we would call typical Carménère.  Very dark and very thick.  Swirled in the glass certainly shows there is body in this wine.  Really nice looking but it is what we would expect. The smells coming from the glass are absolutely fantastic and unique.  It has a Welch's grape juice and gym sock nose but totally in a good way.  There is tha...

Full disclosure, we are totally stealing this idea from a Google+ Post/Ad for winery called Promise Wine in Rutherford, CA.  We have never tried the wine but the post said that they would fit the bill if paired with an Engagement.  So we got to thinkin', beyond the marketing of such a wine what exactly would go well with an engagement? For our personal story it was a wine that we can longer get locally, at a restaurant that is no longer in existence (Butterfly Ridge Cabernet from Australia and La Cave Restaurant for those playing along at home).  The key to that wine and our engagement was that it was special to us.  It was a wine that we found together and enjoyed regularly as a favorite at that time and it made the perfect choice for our engagement.  It was just an everyday bottle, cheap at the time at less than $10 but it had memories for us as a couple attached to it.  Really it was an easy choice. For others it might be a different experience. ...

This is another way to beat the heat So it is unseasonably hot and by hot we mean it felt like 40C or 104F with the humidity.  For East Coast Canadians that is about limit.  Our house is old and feels like an oven (no A/C) and to top it off we have only non-alcoholic drinks to keep hydrated and enjoy with dinner.  Not our usual game plan for July but it is what it is.... Our minds however drifted off to simpler times when an ice bucket filled with wine bottles would make passing a scorching evening a little easier to handle.  It could be anything from a Rosé to a crisp Sauvignon Blanc to even a bubbly like Prosecco.  Anything cold and preferably mostly dry to brighten the tastebuds and soothe the brow. But, the baby will be here soon and the weather will cool off but we do miss nights on the back patio with a nice glass of wine and something fresh off the grill.  The Water, Perrier, and Gatorade are certainly keeping us alive but the wine sure does ...

As the 4th of July weekend has come and gone, we thought this Awesome Video could be inspiration for next year!  Enjoy but Beware! Epic Win! As they said, "Do NOT try this at home!". Keep on tasting! Chris & Shannon

Courtesy TripAdvisor/alt Hotels We have found there to be a few nice perks of running a Blog.  This post might not be wine related but it sure is Blog related.  Since starting our Blog, we have been provided with wine samples,  asked to attend events, but a unique offer was a free night's stay at Halifax's newest airport hotel from  alt Hotels .  They are a small chain of boutique hotels here in Canada.  From their website it looks like they have some pretty strong expansion plans from the current four properties they have today. We received this cool offer at a Blog Jam hosted at the Halifax Offices of National Public Relations  back in the Winter.  They brought together a bunch of local Bloggers just to chat and share ideas.  It was a pretty cool networking event.  In our Swag Bag was this certificate for a free night's stay at the soon to be completed (and now completed) alt Hotel at the Airport.  At the time we thought it ...

So I am traveling for work and my flight back home is delayed.  I just so happened to have a Guest Pass to Air Canada's Maple Leaf Lounge in my wallet thanks to my Bro-In-Law (I owe him one).  So, lunch is included and there is an open bar....whoo hoo.  However, I am keeping it in line and I thought it would be good spot to do a wine review.  They have a Chianti from Ruffino, a Chardonnay from RH Phillips and this Shiraz/Cab from Wolf Blass.  If you see a note for all three the flight is really delayed. Anyhow....let's give this Wolf Blass a looksee. It is deep red in the glass (which is small) and the legs are extremely quick to fall down into the wine.  It looks thinner than the taste.  Not bad at all. The nose smells of vineyard.  It smells like the smells you would get working in a vineyard in general.   The fruit, the wood from the barrels, the diesel from the tractors it seems to have it all.  Which is interesting but not entirely ...

Courtesy CJ Pask Wines We purchased this wine just before we found out Shannon was pregnant and she graciously allowed her Mom and I to enjoy this one on a lovely late Spring evening that ended a very warm day.  We love warm weather. We enjoyed barbecue chicken with fresh avocado and balsamic tomatoes.  That paired wonderfully with a Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc.  This wine from CJ Pask is from Hawkes Bay and is reminiscent of a number of great Sauv Blancs we have had over the last year or so.  Tropical fruit abound in the nose and make for a great tasting experience. Shannon smelled this and immediately mentioned green mango which we all agreed led the way followed closely by starfruit and maybe some papaya.  Great nose! The wine was absolutely crystal clear with a very light yellow colour and a very evident greenish tinge.  It was pale in colour for sure but again really familiar with the others we have tried previously. The flavours are really nic...

Call it boredom or renovation related changes for baby but we have been looking at other Blogs these days and we have seen that there are a number of them that are very cool and clean.  White backgrounds and text with images are really appealing to us right now.  We like the idea of having a more simplified visual tied to UnfussyWine.com. So we made some changes. The beauty of Blogger as a platform is that was super simple to update our template and we can always change it back.  That said, we like it! So, thumbs up or thumbs down?  Easier to read or find things? Let us know what you think. Keep on tasting! Chris & Shannon

We have been extremely lax at adding new posts to the Blog of late.  It has been a combination of early nights, lack of motivation, and ultimately a challenge of giving you good content.  Content that is void of wine tastings.....troublesome to say the least. Now, we are not completely wine review focused but if you go back through our history of posts you will in fact see a lot of wine reviews.  We all know you don't have to drink to have a good time, but we sure are more fun if we do (kidding).  We were able to get away this weekend to spend it with friends and though Shannon was drinking weak green tea, I was able to have a couple of glasses of wine including a nice Las Moras Bonarda .  We had found Bonarda as a grape prior to Shannon being pregnant.  It seems to have a nice full body to it that we will investigate more once baby arrives safely.  It would seem there are a number of options under the $20 mark that we should try.  It has been...

We love touring wineries.  We love tasting the wines, walking the vineyards, and talking to the staff.  The setting is almost always spectacular...and if your really, really fortunate you might get to do things like barrel tastings and talk with the winemaker.  As we have stated previously we prefer it when tastings are complimentary.  We do understand why some wineries choose to charge for their tastings, but having it be waved when the customer buys wine makes much more sense.  Tasting rooms are not bars but it is certainly a place where a product is better sold when you can taste it and get the back-story of the wine.  Our take is that is a better experience when free or with very few strings.  Then again, we don't own a winery.....yet. Back to the tours. We like doing these tours in a self-guided way (though responsibly when it comes to drinking and driving).  Taking our time and figuring out what we like and getting a feel for the place...

Courtesy BluenoseWines.com We ran across a story in our local newspaper the Chronicle Herald this week about a Sonoma Winery with a local connection (read the story here ).  The core part of the piece mentioned that the winery owner, Paul Brasset helped Clos Du Bois get its start and was the winemaker at White Oak Winery. For anyone who has been to Sonoma, you immediately get hit with that smell.  The vineyards, the yeast, the diesel from the trucks.  It is a unique place.  The cool thing about our trip was that those two wineries were on our first day of tastings way back in 2004.  We started at Clos Du Bois with an awesome tasting staffer.  She basically set out our tour of the area by giving us the inside scoop on where she thought we should go based upon our tastes.  She pulled out a map and started going through the list, "Go here for sure, their Zins are awesome but skip these guys, they are jerks and their tasting room is filthy."  A...

Photos Courtesy Jenny Gammon We were very kindly invited to a preview of a new Pop-Up Boutique from our friends at Bishop's Cellar .  The main retail space is undergoing some renovations which are scheduled to last about a week but the staff have pulled together some really neat temporary digs just across the courtyard stocked with mostly value wines.  They were working on things right up to the media launch and the end result looks great (though they are making a few tweaks here and for the official opening on Sunday). The business is celebrating 10 years in business this month and have a lot on their plate.  We have had some real perks as wine bloggers and being invited to events like this are one of them.  I was handed a glass of Blomidon Estate's Cremant as soon as I arrived. We were off to a great start. I was able to spend some time with Matt Rogers ( @MattRogers222  on Twitter) the General Manager.  He showed me the plans for the new look ...