Wines from the Taste Carolina Wine Festival

I am not a wine connoisseur, nor do I pretend to be. That said, I enjoy wine.

I enjoy drinking wine, reading about wine and learning about wine. One day, I’d love to take a class on wine tasting. That would be nice, and it might increase my enjoyment of wine marginally. But more than that, it would just be one more thing in which I’m interested that I’ve further explored.

To me, one’s enjoyment of wine is not dependent upon how much you know about it. I’ll admit that the more you know about what you are tasting, the more heightened the experience can be. But in the end, your enjoyment can be as simple as: Do you like what you are tasting?

Pliny the Elder, in Natural History, wrote:

The best kind of wine is that which is most pleasant to him who drinks it.

With that in mind, here is an overview of the wines I most enjoyed at a Taste of Carolina Wine Festival on Saturday. If you find the tasting notes to be elementary, then perhaps you should drink a bottle and decide for yourself.

I’ve listed my top two wineries respectively, but the others follow only in the order of tasting.

Cerminaro

I tasted many wines from here, but I noted only four. They represent the best of the six. I purchased all six.

What made Cerminaro the best tasting that while I found a better red and a better white other places, their wines were consistently good and reliable across varietals.

Cabernet Sauvignon

Winery description: Not available.

My thoughts: Not as full-bodied as I would have liked, but a smooth, full flavor. Nice spice to it. Just a solid Cab.

DeChaunac

Winery description: Not available.

My thoughts: Semi-dry. Nice nutty flavor with a smokey hint. Very reminiscent of a chianti, with a hint of plum. My favorite red of the tasting at Cerminaro and my second favorite red of the event.

Vino D’Oro

Winery description: Not available.

My thoughts: An easy-drinking wine. Light fruit flavors, with a hint of sweetness.

Seyval Blanc

Winery description: Not available.

My thoughts: Crisp. Dry. Hints of citrus. This is a great wine for a warm afternoon. My second favorite white of the event.

Thistle Meadow Winery

North Fork Red

Winery description: Made from Australian grapes, this blend of 70 percent Cabernet and 30 percent Shiraz offers a rich, deep red color and a full taste, nicely rounded with oak. Full-bodied.

My thoughts: This was the least favorite of the four reds I tasted here. It was a typical, mid-level blend in my opinion. It was a nice drink, but nothing special.

Vieux Chateau du Roi

Winery description: This big red wine offers a great berry and cherry aroma. Made in the style of Chateauneuf du Pape, this Syrah blend (with a little Mourvedre) won a silver medal at the Dixie Classic Fair in 2003.

My thoughts: One of my top five reds. A great spice. Nice, rich flavor with just a hint of oak. As they state, a great aroma — one of the best of the wines there.

Devil’s Garden Red

Winery description: A full-bodied spicy and deeply colored Chilean red wine, with flavors of black cherry and plum. It offers a hint of anise, and a lightly toasted vanilla finish.

My thoughts: My favorite red wine of the day. And wouldn’t you know they were out of it when I went to purchase it. This would make a great compliment to a hearty meal or the centerpiece to an evening of wine tasting.

Lumina Winery

Oleander Rossa

Winery description: Big, bold and bountiful with loads of rich black fruits and oak. Plenty of tannin and structure.

My thoughts: It tastes much like they describe, though it was not as big and bold as I prefer. It was a bit thin for me.

Allison Oaks Vineyard

Proprietor’s Blend

Winery description: …Creative and unique blend of hand-picked Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Zinfandel and Syrah grapes fermented in small batches to bring out it’s distinctive taste.

My thoughts: One of the best red wines I tasted. Plenty of tannins that led to a rich finish. A hearty enough wine for a heavy steak, but still approachable for sipping.

Uwharrie Vineyards

Noble

Winery description: Full bodied and fruit forward passion to the extreme. This wine is soft, sweet, and reserved with wild berry overtones. It captures the essence of picking the fruit right off the vine and placing it in the bottle.

My thoughts: This would make an excellent sipping wine. Great to enjoy after dinner or on a cool afternoon outside. A lighter red, it had plenty of flavor but few tannins.

White Syrah

Winery description: The dark red Syrah grape is harvested and immediately pressed to create this exciting color. Finished as a semi-dry, this wine is subtle with wild berry character and a hint of spice on the end.

My thoughts: I do not like blushes, but I enjoyed this wine. It was dry enough for me to enjoy, and it offset its sweetness with a nice flavor of berry.

Autumn Creek

Niagra

Winery description: Not available

My thoughts: Semi-sweet wine that both my wife and I could enjoy. I prefer a much dryer wine on most days, but this was nice, smooth and didn’t make me feel as if I was drinking Kool-Aid.

Chardonnay

Winery description: Not available.

My thoughts: An unoaked Chardonnay that I found appealing for its dry, sharp taste. I’m not a Chardonnay fan, and I will only try unoaked Chards. This one was not “impressive”, per se, but it was nice. (And for a Chardonnay, nice is about as good as it gets for me.)

Grove Winery

Traminette

Winery description: German-style grape with Gewürztraminer parentage generates a spicy, crisp wine that’s perfect for Asian fare, sausages, duck and other rich food. This estate grown wine offers a floral bouquet and light herbal and spice flavors with citrus undertones. The 2006 Traminette is finished dry and was harvested earlier than previous years for higher acid balance.

My thoughts: A spectacular white wine. This was my favorite white of the day. It was the only white that provided the fruity crispness and spicy finish I enjoy.

Merlot

Winery description: Nice looking fruit from the great 2005 vintage. Estate grown. Barrel aged. Gold medal winner in the 2006 Mid-Atlantic Wine Competition.

My thoughts: An excellent Merlot. I enjoy Merlots the least of any red, but this was nice. It had an even palette with a fleshy finish.

Stony Mountain Vineyards

Sangiovese

_Winery description_s: Not available.

My thoughts: I drank a lot of Sangiovese wine when I visited Italy. We brought home a lot of them and have since gone through them. For whatever reason, I’ve never purchased a bottle in the states … until now.

This wine had a nice earthy taste to it, with hints of dark cherry. It also had a good bit of acidity to it, more than I remember from the bottles I had from Italy. Still, a really nice wine. I’ll have to purchase other Sangiovese wines after I drink this bottle. I seem to really enjoy them.

Stonefield Cellars

Bicentennial Red Blend

Winery descriptions: Not available.

My thoughts: This was a nice blend, but I’ll admit to it being nothing spectacular in the tasting. It was a thin red, one that would make for good sipping.

That said, I purchased it because it was newly bottled for the 2008 Greensboro, NC, bicentennial celebration. I’ll let it age a year or so and then try it.

Other tastings

In all, I tasted wines from all 19 wineries. Many were fruity wines or muscadine wines, none of which thrilled me but were a big hit with my wife.

I will give honorable mention to Weathervane Winery. They had the best fruity wines of the bunch, some real unique flavors. My favorite was Rooster Red, a Chianti with cranberries. My wife loved the Tropical Wave, a kiwi-flavored Gewurztraminer. I tried their reds, which were nice. To be honest, though, by this point, my palette was shot.

No Doctor Who, just Sarah Jane

Imagine my disappointment when I realized my plans for last Friday night fell through. There would be no Doctor Who. I would be forced to wait another week.

Instead, I would find solace only with The Sarah Jane Adventures, which I was looking forward to watching as well.

This will not be a lengthy review. The short story is this: I liked SJA, but I didn’t love it.

To me, Elisabeth Sladen never really hit stride until late in the episode. One of her three sidekicks was extremely annoying. The other two were OK, but we’ll have to wait and see.

That said, it was a fair start. Good enough for me to watch next week and see if any improvement has been made.

As for Doctor Who, he returns next week on the SciFi Channel here in the U.S. And this time, I’ll be watching. (And the teaser looks AWESOME!)

(Now leaving Doctor Who Geekdom and returning to my regular life…)

Confessions of a Doctor Who fan…

My name is Sam Hall, and I watch Doctor Who.

There, I said it. I’m a fan of Doctor Who. Growing up, I loved the original series. Tom Baker, of course, was my favorite, but it was actually Peter Davison who I saw the most.

I came late to the new series, which started three years ago as a BBC show ported to the Sci-Fi Channel for American viewers.

Flipping channels one afternoon a while back, I came across the distinctive theme. It was just a couple of episodes in on a marathon of the first season of the new series, starring Christopher Eccleston.

Eccletson, of course, lasted only one season. Just as I was getting accustom to the new Doctor Who, the end of the marathon threw me for a loop when Eccleston regenerated into David Tennant.

“Isn’t that just my luck,” I thought. “I’ll probably hate the new guy.”

Wrong. So wrong. Tennant is my new favorite Doctor. And while I know the fact that I get all giddy about having a new favorite portrayer of a childhood icon marks me as a bit on the geek side of things, I truly do not care.

I’ve seen every episode of the new series, save the two Christmas specials that began seasons 2 and 3. My uncle (actually Tara’s uncle, but who’s counting…) and I even bought an old series of Tom Baker and had a marathon a few Saturdays ago.

Season 4 begins on April 11 on the Sci-Fi Channel. And while others may be out partying, I’ll have just put my children to bed as I settle back into my office chair and watch Doctor Who.

Why not watch it in the comfort of my big, cushy chair in the living room, you might ask? Because my wife thinks Doctor Who is stupid, and she won’t watch it with me.

Shows what she knows!