Unfussy Wine Enthusiasts | Wine Reviews & Articles

As we go through our roster of wines from the 2014 NSLC Port of Wines Festival we get to try wines that stood out on the day.  The Italian table was a bit of a hit and miss group of wines wrapped up with a lot of really nice but expensive Amarones and Barolos.  This Sicilian wine came in at the middle of our price point at $21.79 which is a little high for Nero d'Avola but this is a nice wine.  According to Wikipedia this grape is the most important grape for the island at the tip of the boot of Italy. In the glass this wine is a lighter bodied red which is typical of this grape.  It is very purple in colour and in the glass you see it has a slight transparency for a darker red.  Again this is typical of the grape. The nose is very smokey and has a strong leather sensation when you breathe deeply.  There is a very plummy undertone to things and it makes it an enticing smell.  Really quite nice. Nero has Pinot No...

Not a formal Wine Review tonight as the hour is getting late. But, we decided the pricing was too good to not try the Montalto Nero d'Avola Cabernet blend and at $17.99 CDN for 1.5 Litres it is a steal of a deal. Not sure the availability in all jurisdictions but in the States they are probably giving this stuff away.  For us, this is a while supplies late kind of a deal for the double bottles. The 750ml bottles are around all the time but the big ones are once a year event evidently. Either way, it is a great tasting table red much in the same vein as the wine from Bairrada yesterday. Good weight, tastes fairly well made and is not thin at all.  Adequate fruitiness on the nose with hints of strawberry and a little star anise.  Tasty stuff!  We had it with Pizza and it was a perfect match.  Sicilian wine with Pizza, surprise! (and colour me obvious). After all is said and done with this wine, falls in the same region as the Bairrada so 77.5% overall...

One of our amazing followers requested we give this one a try and so this evening we enjoyed a bottle of the Montalto Pinot Grigio from Sicily with some Greek food (those poor beleagured Greeks). This wine is $11.79 for a 750 ml bottle but an amazing $17.89 for 1.5 L. That my friends, is what we might call a good deal. They also have a Nero d’Avola (a main Sicilian grape) in the same price range which is intriguing as well. The wine itself has a little more golden colour to it than we might expect for a Pinot Grigio. It is not Aussie Chardonnay golden but it is absolutely darker than a Sauvignon Blanc. Having not drunk a ton of Pinot Grigio (or Pinot Gris) we were not sure of the tendencies in this grape.   We thought it might have spent some time in oak but the interwebs tell us different and they use the term straw coloured as a descriptor. We’ll buy into that. The nose has some citrusy notes, with what we could best describe as dried apricots (not fresh – dried) and ...