The pleasures of good white wine

Wine with Hillary: Vampire makes a tasty blood-red wine

Just in time for Halloween comes this product from the Transylvania area of Romania. Unsurprisingly, it's a beautiful blood purple red and the taste is very good. It has a thick earthy flavor that gets less intense over time. Although most of my tasters were more excited about the cool label than the wine at first, and were more interested in discussing prurient matters in bad eastern European accents, all my tasters enjoyed drinking Vampire.

Wine with Hillary: Break out the champagne!

Toast election victory or numb your pain

As most of you know, next week we will be having a contest worthy of its own pay-per-view special in which one side will come out victorious and lord it over the losers for the next four years. Lest the Orient be blamed for a political bias, I will not say whom I want to win, but instead, this week, I am devoting my column to the proper drink for all celebratory occasions: champagne.

Wine with Hillary

The pleasures of good white wine

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

October 22, 2004

Welcome once again to the fantastic world of wines. I've been feeling a little guilty the last week or so because I have been, as usual, neglecting white wines. This is mostly because I'm not really a white wine kind of girl. I can't be bothered to plan ahead enough to actually put a bottle in the fridge to chill in advance, and since most of my wine drinking is spontaneous, I frequently don't have a white ready to drink. So this week, to make up for my poor representation of white wines, I have two very lovely but wholly different wines.

1. Selbach 2002 Riesling

Unfortunately, Riesling wines are often cloyingly sweet which means that I can't usually drink more than a glass. However, this Riesling is not. I found it to be very dry for the type of wine that it is. Make no mistake, if you hate wines that are sweet, you're still not going to like it, but if you can handle a little sweet, this is a good one. It tastes flowery and has a crisp finish. As it warms up, the wine becomes sweeter, so leave it chilling as you drink, unless you're someone who would appreciate drinking, say, peach schnapps out of the bottle. Rieslings are likely to have a low alcohol percentage, making this the perfect wine to drink with a leisurely lunch. You can easily drink a glass or two and feel no effect (Note, this does not mean you should go guzzle a bottle and then drive). Even though Riesling is associated with Austria and the Pacific Northwest, I recommend drinking this with pleasant French food; why it works, I don't know, but it does. $8.00 on sale at Provisions.

2. Wild Pig 2002 Chardonnay

This chardonnay is the opposite of a Riesling. My tasters and I found it to be very heavy for a white wine, which makes it a good option for you red fans. It's not very sweet, nor is it very dry, and the primary flavor is of mushroom. What was especially nice about this wine was that it didn't really change its flavor too much as it warmed up. We found it highly drinkable by itself, and my tasters seemed to enjoy it with chocolate cake of all things. The label has a dedication to Greta. Greta, you should be proud of the honor. I find this to be an excellent white that I would buy again. $7.00 at Shaw's.

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