Unfussy Wine Enthusiasts | Wine Reviews & Articles

So.... we are a little bit late on this wine review. To be precise, we are 6 years, 11 months and 1 week late.  Yes, you read that right.  We received this wine in good faith from a PR Firm in Toronto for review in early December of 2013. We totally and unequivocally made a mess of this for them but in our defense we had a three month old at the time and it absolutely fell off our radar and then got locked in our cellar to only be pulled out for the Joe Biden / Kamala Harris 2020 election victory in the US today.  To Michelle at the PR Firm.... our deepest apologies. So, what should have been reviewed as a likely youthful and crisp Sauvignon Blanc sparkler is now and bottle aged wine that has been stored quite well since we received it. The original notes we received in support of the wine make note of the following: "Brilliantly clear and almost pale straw in colour, the bouquet of this wine is an elegant mélange of tropical fruits, lychees, green peppers, pineap...

This was a late in the show NSLC Port of Wines Festival selection. Palates were exhausted and there wasn't enough bread to bring it back. We knew we wanted to hit the South Africa table before we left and we wanted to find a Pinotage to take home. Well, mission accomplished with the Beyerskloof Pintoage ($18.49 locally). It still stood out with tired tongues but to be honest we weren't sure if we were gonna love it when we tried it. Well good news... Pinotage tends to be a lighter coloured red wine and this one is about average though it has transparent edges which is an interesting effect. While not as thin as it's cousin Pinot Noir, there is definitely a clear structure to the wine. We have found Pinotage to be nutty to the point of dark chocolate or even coffee.  This wine however is not as nutty as we might expect. There is a touch in there but this reads more like a Grenache with distinct notes of Cherry Twizzlers and vanilla in there. ...

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...

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...

We have tried this wine previously and had a favorable opinion of it, but it was this most recent tasting that caused us to stop and take a closer look.  This wine from Roodeberg (a division of KWV Brands) is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Merlot, and Petit Verdot.  At $14 locally it is a price that is right up our alley.  When we tasted it last time it was quite extraordinary for the price so we wanted to give it a formal review. In the glass it is a medium bodied wine with an ever so slight transparency and a dark cranberry juice colour.  It is quite a vibrant colour with a little bit of a watery look in the legs on the sides of the glass but it is a nice looking wine. On the nose there is a lot of cedar and oak but it is just a touch hot when you really stick your nose in the glass.  The wine really smells of black cherries and blackberry compote, meaning a thicker stewed berry smell with a touch of tobacco.  It also has a slight barnyar...

Not our regular selection So, let us start out by saying two things.  First, Champagne for our purposes here = Sparkling Wine in all its many constituents (typing one word instead of two = lazy).  Second, our consumption of fine French Champagne consists of one glass of Dom Perignon , half a bottle of Perrier-Jouet , and a few bottles of Moet-Chandon .  Other than that we are under-educated bubbly drinkers.  We have certainly had sparklers from California, Australia, Argentina, South Africa, and Chile.  We've had Cava from Spain and Prosecco from Italy. With all that said, in all those bubbles, we have never had an out of body experience when comes to Champagne.  Don't get us wrong, the Perrier-Jouets and Moets were an experience (and a good one at that) but we haven't seen our wow-o-meter go off the charts with bubbly.  Some of it is definitely preference but putting that aside we do note that a lot of sparkling wine seems to be missing balance....

Courtesy guardian.co.uk We had a great weekend of wine with family for Mother's Day.  Our list included a number of Canadian selections which really wowed us.  Below are the wines and their aggregate scores (it really was a busy weekend - there may be one on the list that make a return). Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there! 2010 Pelee Island Lighthouse Cabernet Franc (Ontario, Canada) - elegant and bold with ripe fruit and a little chocolate ($15 locally): 85% 2010 20 Bees Pinot Grigio (Ontario, Canada) - honeysuckle and citrus with a nice crisp finish ($13 locally): 80% 2010 Avondale Sky Lavender Dry Rose  (Nova Scotia, Canada) - lots of nice fruit and only a hint of muted sweetness, excellent mouthfeel ($17 locally): 82.5% 2010 Two Oceans Sauvignon Blanc (South Africa) - crisp and dry Sauv Blanc with a light lemon-lime nose and taste, great patio wine ($12 locally): 77.5% We won't see this kind of volume until Father's Day....yeah right...w...

Last evening we had this wine from False Bay Wines . From South Africa it is a very full flavourful Chenin Blanc grown and produced on the Western Cape.  It is also known as Steen in South Africa but it retains one of its French names in this version.  Unbeknownst to us Chenin Blanc is also known as Pineau de la Loire in France and is a grape that has a lot of interpretations in terms of wine making (thank you again Wikipedia).  This version is a crisp and full flavoured white wine.  It has a lot of nice smells and tastes and at $13 is a great value. In the glass it is a very pale golden colour and has seen no oak according to the False Bay website.  It is a light wine visually which belies the actual body in the glass.  The nose is very apple/pear with definitely a starfruit undertone.  It is a really nice aromatic wine and is also light compared to the taste. Now onto the taste, it has such a great mouthfeel for what would be considered a lighte...

As you might had figured out from the title, we are not against Jammy wines.  In fact, quite to the contrary, we love big and delicious red wines.  The part we have trouble with is when they are big jammy wines and have a crap-load of residual sugar still.  That's when jammy just means jam...sweet, sweet jam.  Now, given the trends we have seen in the wines from Australia and other countries, we might now be in the minority. Enter Glen Carlou Syrah....it is definitely a jammy wine on the nose.  It smells super oaky and has tons of strawberry and raspberry jam in there.  So much so you begin to think it will taste like sweet Aussie Shiraz.  So, it is super welcoming to find that it is a dry red wine in all the best ways.  There is tar and leather and all those characteristics but it tastes like a big, bold red wine.  Really nice. From the descriptions we have read it is aged in oak and is picked from a lower yield vineyard.  The...

We poured this wine in the glass and it looks a heck of a lot darker than most Sauv Blancs we have tasted. It almost has the Oaked Aussie Chardonnay colour. But once we tasted it we could not really pick out an overtly vanilla or oak sensibility on the nose or the palate. So, it just looks darker than most. This wine is another from the Hill & Dale Winery in South Africa.  We have been fans of their Cab/Shiraz so we figured we give this one a try too, especially at $13 locally. The visuals on the wine are definitely atypical of the Sauv Blanc we have tried from NZ or the USA.  This has a depth of colour that we just don't see.  It looks good mind you just not the light Sauv Blanc tones we would expect. On the nose we get Citrus but we also get a load of Cilantro and Green Pepper.  They mention grass on the label and we can see that but it certainly has a bit more of the vegetal notes.  It is a fairly nice smelling wine if you like the greeness. On...

This wine was a favorite of ours in the 2008 vintage. It tasted like a $40 wine at $15 and it was awesome. We judged it 85% and it was a very round wine with great balance. It was an absolutely great wine. So then 2009 comes around and we decided to give it a try.  As the title says what a difference a year makes.... The good news.....it is still a great wine.  That bad news....the roundness and balance we so appreciated in 2008 are diminished.  The 2009 version has a lot more acidity than 2008 and it is overpowering the fruit in the wine which adds astringency to it.  Still this is not a bad wine at all, but if you can still find the 2008 version buy a case of it or buy them out altogether.  At $15 the 2009 is still a great wine to bring to a dinner party.  It is very approachable but we are longing for the 2008.  A search may be in order. Even the visual seems to be different.  From what we noted for...

As you may or may not remember we tried and reviewed this wine just over a month ago (to refresh your memory click here  - ust click Home when you are done). We were at Bishop's Cellar this weekend and decided a re-try was in order.  As a comparison over the last month we even tried the Org de Rac Shiraz which, while a nice drinking wine (in the low to mid 80 point range), it couldn't even tie the shoes of the Merlot. We won't get into too much detail other than to say that this South African Merlot from Org de Rac  is now the early candidate for our prestigious Wine of the Year.  We know, it is definitely early but we will not lose track of this one and indeed if they do not sell out of this shortly we will be off for yet another bottle (or two) for storage for later in the year.  Seriously, it is that good.  Highlights of the Review: Very dark wine Dark fruit and leather dominate the nose Big, bold flavours of oak and plum, ve...

So we open this bottle of South African Mourvèdre from Fairview Wine and Cheese , pour it into the decanter, give it about 15 minutes in there and then start to drink it.  First thing we get on the nose......mothballs.  Seriously, Grandma's attic mothballs.  We are not super familiar with Mourvèdre so we are kinda thrown off. Are we maybe smelling cedar, not mothballs?  Nope it is mothballs.  It is not super unattractive just not usual, so we are trying to understand whether or not it might be corked.  Online research tells us that 'corked' smells like musty cardboard or old clothes so we are not sure if that is what this smells like or not.  Statistics on the percentage of corked wine range from 5% to 13% depending on the source so that means on average we are supposed to be getting a couple a month.  We don't think we get that many corked wines but maybe we just don't know what we should be looking for.  That said, we sti...