First, a little bit more info on me. I’m 28, and I live in a house I own in Joplin, MO with my three cats. I also own a comic shop with my brother, Hurley’s Heroes Comics & Games, that we just got up and running about 3 weeks ago. I also work a day job, and will continue to do so until the comic shop turns enough of a profit to allow me to quit. I’m figuring that’ll take about a year. In the mean time, I’m working something like 80-90 hour weeks, and my only real free time is on Sunday evenings. I’ve decided to use that free time to drink wine, watch TV, and write this blog.
Now, “wine rookie”, what the heck is that all about? As I noted above, I’m no stranger to alcohol. In fact, while they weren’t recorded, I’ve done exercises similar to this one with beer, and whiskey in the past. Does rookie imply that I’ve never had wine then? No, I’ve had wine before, some that I’ve liked, and some I haven’t, but I’ve never paid any attention to what it was I was drinking. I think that by calling myself a “wine rookie”, I’m trying to make some very weak sports analogy about moving from the minors up to the majors. Sure, I’ve had wine before, but I’ve never tried a wide variety of wines, or tried to catalog what it was that I did or didn’t like about each of them. I’ve never even tried to find a wine that I really liked.
With that out of the way, let’s talk wine. To start things off, I went to the local Macadoodle’s, a pretty nice store with a friendly and seemingly knowledgeable staff, and a wide selection of wines. As soon as I walked into the wine section, I was greeted by a nice smiling dude (who’s name I’ll be sure to get next time I’m in) who asked me if I needed some help, which, of course, I did. I told him I wanted something sweet, fruity, and not even a little dry. What little experience I do have with wine told me this was the place to start. He asked me if I wanted a red or white, to which I promptly replied, “I have no idea.” He suggested I try one of the bottles they had open for samples that night (and how awesome is that!?), and I heartily agreed. The sample wine was a sparkling white that I promptly forgot the name of, despite trying to commit it to memory. Next time I’m bringing a note pad. It was good. Fruity and sweet, just like I’d asked for, but it wasn’t quite what I wanted. It was hard for me to describe, but I wanted something richer, more of a full flavor, and no bubbles. I told the dude as much (really need to find out his name), told him the budget I was looking at (under $15), and he pretty immediately led me to a bottle of red that he said should fit my criteria nicely. It was only about seven bucks. So I picked it up.
The wine in question is Adam Puchta Riefenstahler, a sweet red wine made right here in Missouri. Here’s what the back of the bottle has to say about it:
This sweet red wine has a full concord nose with blackberry jam characteristics. Great over vanilla ice cream for your adult float or mix with sparkling grape juice – voila – your afternoon spritzer. Our number one selling red wine… take a sip and you’ll see why!
Sounds tasty, right?
I was told, by the dude, to serve it slightly chilled, so I threw it in the fridge when I got home, and went back out to buy some wine glasses. I’ve heard that different wines should be served in different glasses, but frankly, I only had enough scratch to get one set, and for the time being they’d have to be all encompassing. In fact the budget for wine glasses was pretty much the 7 bucks left over from the initial wine budget after the cost of the bottle. I hit up Wal-Mart and snagged a set of four “stemmed goblets” for a cool five bucks.
Now, here we are a couple hours later, the wine’s chilled, the movie’s on (Galaxy Quest) and it’s about time to get down to the drinking. Wait, crap… I don’t have any way to pull this friggin’ cork. Crap. Alright, I’m off back to Wal-Mart, see you in a few.
Some time later...
Back on track, corkscrew's been purchased and put to good use. Onward!
Seriously this time, let’s get on to the drinking. It smells good, and it tastes even better! Wow, I seriously didn’t think I’d find something this tasty right out of the gate. It’s very sweet, but not overly so, and there’s really not much of that kind of acidy/winey taste to it. I’m definitely catching that blackberry taste they mentioned. It kind of goes down with a pretty strong grape flavor, then you start catching the blackberry flavor afterward. Really, really tasty. More after I drink on it for a while.Later still...
Apparently, by “drink on it for a while,” I actually meant “polish off the bottle.” It remained a tasty beverage throughout, but after the first glass it did kind of started getting a tinge of a sour aftertaste. My brother tells me this may be due to the fact that you’re not actually supposed to drink a whole bottle at once. Whatever.
All in all, good stuff. I’d give it an A+ if I had any basis for comparison at all.
