Pelee Island Winery - Riesling Dry

Origin: Ontario
Date drunk: January 31st, 2009

Yet again, sweet animal description on the back of the bottle that truly entices me to buy this brand:

"An elegant, one metre, all-white bird might conceivably be quite conspicuous, yet the Great White Egret is unmatched in its ability to stalk fish and other small aquatic creatures."

g.: I'm disappointed. This is a harsh drink. I think it's the "dry" part I don't like--I know I hate dry wines, but I thought this kind would be DIFFERENT. Riesling, you failed me. At this point, I'm just going to drink it because it's here.

(NOTE: If you like dry wines, you might like this. Who knows?)

d.: It's bitter; it doesn't have that apple taste of the Dan Aykroyd wine. It's very blandly bitter.

(d. is making awful sounds of disgust while sipping it. "luhluhluhluhluh")

Conclusion: The Dan Aykroyd Riesling is way better. This is just a boring, cheap, bitter-tasting wine. Too bad, Pelee Island.

Dan Aykroyd - Discovery Series - Riesling

Origin: Ontario
Date Drunk: January 31st, 2009

g.: We seriously bought the Dan Aykroyd wine. I was kind of embarrassed about the liquor store clerk seeing us buy it, but Daniel took that bullet for me.

d.: He was in Ghostbusters.

g.: Dude's gotta have good taste in... stuff, right? On the back of the bottle it says he was buds with a guy who knew about wine. Credentials.

So:

d.: It tastes like a Granny Smith apple—one of the small, crunchy, juicy, sour ones.

g.: This is really, really sugary, but not sickeningly so. It's kind of like someone poured a few shots of booze into a bowl of green kool-aid at a school dance. It has a really consistent, warm taste. Really warm. It's the only word I can really come up with. Or maybe I'm just confusing it with that warm alcohol feeling as it goes down my throat.

(Dear people I know,
I am not an alcoholic.)

d. is pretty confident about that Granny Smith apples flavour. I probably would be too, if I didn't hate apple skins so much. Apple alternative? I THINK SO.

d.: Even the feeling in my mouth is the same as after eating a Granny Smith apple (the dry feeling on my teeth, too. It's the same).

g.: My mouth is shrivelling up.

Do we like this?

g.: The flavour is a bit too... bold for me, unlike a mild Pinot Grigio (apparently I like my wine like I like my water—TASTELESS), but I think this is entirely drinkable.

d.: I like the overall appleness of it, but there is an undercurrent of unsavoriness there; a soupçon of shivery bitterness.

NOTES:
- We didn't refrigerate it for long enough, possibly.
- There is a microphone on the bottle (and on the cork).
- It's like $15.00, and you could probably find a really similar bottle for $9.95 (IN ONTARIO).
- DAN AYKROYD

Pelee Island Winery - Pinot Grigio

Origin: Ontario
Date drunk: Jan. 28th, 2009

g.: My favourite part about the Pelee Island wines, honestly, is the Hinterland Who's Who style text on the back of every bottle. Regard the piping plover, as it sits on your wine bottle, telling you that this is yet another $10 bottle of Ontario wine.

Actually on the back:

"The Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly makes its appearance primarily in open fields and the wooded areas on Pelee Island. They prefer flat, single, daisy-like flowers in the full morning sunlight, where they sit until their muscles are warm enough to fly."

d.: The taste has a "blannng."* It leaves a little patch sour stuck to the back of the roof of your mouth; it's not a bad patch of sour.

g.: It's really mellow, besides the little sour bit. It kind of tastes like sour candies.

* d. specified that this taste clearly had three "N"s.

I think we've decided that Pinot Grigio wines are awesome. This one was particularly drinkable. Can you get this stuff outside of Ontario? We're hoping you can, for the sake of the wine-drinking world.

Bandit - Pinot Grigio

Origin: California
Date drunk: January 23rd, 2009

d.: It smells like meat.
g.: It smells like HAM.
d.: I expected little ham chunks to drop out and float like ice cubes. This wine is not kosher.
g.: The colour is really pretty. And it comes in a carton. AND it's a LITRE. 13%.

After a few sips:

d.: Compared to how it smells, it tastes like a million bucks. I don't know what a million bucks tastes like--probably dirty.
g.: It doesn't taste like ham.
d.: Don't breathe in through your nose while drinking this wine.

I guess this wine is actually kosher*. It just smells sacrilegious.

* PLEASE DON'T TAKE OUR WORD ON THIS. WE CANNOT AFFORD TO BE SUED.

Baldivis - Chardonnay

Origin: Western Australia
Date drunk: January 23rd, 2009

This one has a woody flavour--the end taste, anyway. It smells like fruit. Maybe apple. AND, it comes in a bag. Or, according to the LCBO receipt, a CHEER PACK. It smells like going apple picking.

Seriously, it smells really strongly. It's the most distinctive part of this wine, IMO.

Besides the BAG part.

I think we like this one. For a chardonnay. A+.

We were too fucking blown away by the smell of this wine to actually have a real conversation about it.

Eugenio Collavini - Pinot Grigio

Origin: Italy
Date drunk: January 9th, 2009

d.: It feels like a line right down the middle of the taste.
g.: My first reaction was GREAT WHITE. It has that essence of shark. It starts off tasting like straight up booze, but then calms down to this weird fruit taste.
I like the fruit taste.
d.: It's a good wine, but it just has a POW to it.

That's all we were apparently able to write down about this wine. Surprisingly, this was the first bottle of the night.

Tosh and Pepper - Chardonnay

Origin: Australia
Date drunk: January 3rd, 2009

d.: This smells like bad turpentine.
g.: It looks like pee.

(We bought this because there are birds on the label. Also, it's in a plastic bottle and is a full litre, although the same size as a regular 750 ml bottle. We will find out if they are lying.*

g.: tastes 100000000** times better than it smells.

Actual important and relevant information:
- "Kind of a sharp taste."
- This was drier than the Argento in the previous post.


*They aren't.
**To pedantic mathematics people: 100 000 000

Argento - Pinot Grigio

Origin: Argentina
Date drunk: January 3rd, 2009

d.: Smells like wine.
g.: Smells like turpentine.
d.: Makes a good sound while pouring. [you know, glug glug glug glug GLUG]
g.: It tingles the tip of my tongue.

After at least 2-3 glasses each:

d.: It tastes like drunk.
g.: It tastes like how Smirnoff Ice tastes good after you've had a quart of vodka.
d.: PINEAPPLES!
g.: Who does?!

This was a good night. I think the wine was also good--good like a free wine cooler that someone leaves on a table at the bar. *

*d. does not support this sort of behaviour. It's icky.
**g. feels that her undergrad university career was supported by this sort of behaviour.
***d. feels that g. should get another patron.

Wherein we talk about wine when we're drunk.

We like to drink wine. We also like to write; we aren't, however, experts in writing about drinking wine. We don't know any fancy things about legs and noses and bouquets and, you know, wine jargon. We own some wine glasses, though. They're nice ones. Thin and classy ones that you can make sounds with when you spit on your finger* and run it around the edge.

We're going to talk about the things that are important--the crap that you actually want to know about wine before you buy it. Like, oh, if it tastes like shit. We're going to help you. Trust us.

*D. says he would never spit, because that's unhygienic.