Region: Barsac, Bordeaux, France

Price: $24.99 at Total Wine

Sight: Versailles gold

Smell: butterscotch, apricot, guava, almond

Taste: sweet, apricot, honey, butterscotch candy, orange, almond

Overall: Glorious.  This dessert wine has a perfume of sweet apricots and buttery almonds.  The texture of the wine is like a luxurious blanket over the palate, and the apricot notes are amplified all the way to the nutty almond finish.  A hit of orange lightly strikes the glands, bringing in some acidity to balance out the filled-out honey sweetness.  The core of the flavor of this entire experience is something like butterscotch candy.  I bought this for my dad for Father’s Day, and when he tasted it, he said, “It’s my grandmother’s house!” and I said, “…What?”  and he said, “Butterscotch candies!”  Something about this wine brought back the memory of his grandmother’s ever-present bowl of Brach’s butterscotch hard candies.  And that’s why wine is so awesome.  It really can take you anywhere.

Time to celebrate!  It is the first bubbly of the blog—and no it’s not Champagne… it’s sparkling Moscato!  This is another tasting note you can thank Hannah for.  She had this Maschio Moscato Spumante Cadoro at a restaurant and loved it so much that she just had to track it down and find it.  She searched high and low, found it again, and I was fortunate enough to be there when she opened it.  We paired it with a creamy chicken alfredo.  

Region: Apulia (southern Italy)

Grape: Muscat

Price: $16.99

Sight: Straw yellow

Smell: Pineapple, pear, musk

Taste: Green apple, pear, apricot, pleasant sweetness, zippy acidity

Overall:  I really loved this wine and would definitely drink it again.  The bubbles were very fine, gentle and steady.  The aroma was straight up perfume.  It had a nice tropical scent, but also a little stinkyness that gave it a little maturity and weight.  (I’m always hesitant to call it “stinkyness” because it doesn’t sound appetizing, so I initially called it “musk,” if that’s alright.)  The fruit was crisp and fresh; I was stuck on the green apple, while for Hannah the most prominent flavor was the apricot.  The wine wasn’t overly sweet or gloopy—rather the sweetness funneled off nicely into a slim tartness that kept the finish feeling fresh without puckering me up.  This was a well-balanced wine, and a great pairing for our chicken alfredo.  Kudos to Hannah for her excellent selection!