I was going to write a blog about the parenting disaster that’s been my last 24 hours but instead thought I’d focus on something that makes me happy.
Wine.
Last week I attended a wine tasting at The Wine Bar in Toronto. It was a Yummy Mummy Club event hosted by WineAlign.com. WineAlign is a website which can help you choose wines – you have access to critic reviews, can see if it’s carried in your local LCBO and also find wines based on your budget and food choices. We invited some Yummy Mummy Club members to come out to learn the art of wine tasting by WineAlign master sommelier John Szabo and wine critic Sarah d’Amato.
I’m not gonna lie. I’m pretty much a wine marketer’s dream. I walk into the LCBO and am like a deer in the headlights, wandering up and down the aisles until a label catches my eye and voila! Wine picked. So yes, I’ve bought Strut: Red Over Heels, Sibling Rivalry and Dan Akroyd’s wine. Also, this…because it has the Yummy Mummy lips on it.
If I do manage to write down the name of a wine I enjoy while at a friend’s house or restaurant, I can never find it in the LCBO because I’ll forget what the label looks like or some integral piece of information like the country where it was made. Also, is it just me or can wine labels be really confusing? So again, I’m left wandering up and down aisles while trying to keep two kids from knocking something over. The last thing I want to do is pay for a broken bottle of wine that I can’t drink, or twenty.
Unlike my forays into the LCBO, the wine tasting evening was a smashing success. It was filled with good conversation, fabulous food and we got to learn about (and taste!) some incredible wines – wines I would never have tried because their labels were boring. It was interesting listening to John and Sarah describe the wines using words like robust, lean, long legs, lush, dense, or full-bodied.
They would also describe the flavours within the wine and once again - deer in the headlights. Each time they asked us what flavours we tasted, I would quickly glance around to see what other people were saying because I had no idea.
Like this 2009 Quinta De Ventozelo Reserva Port we tasted. If you read the reviews on WineAlign there are descriptions like: raisined fruit, cookie dough and herbal foresty notes or Lifted floral, plummy, blueberry nose with background spice.
Ya....I got none of that. But I do know I liked it, so much so I needed a second *tasting*.
My absolute favourite of the evening was the Ghost Pines Winemaker's Blend Cabernet Sauvignon 2007, Napa County/Sonoma County.
Now here’s where the WineAlign website gets really cool. I know I like this Ghost Pines wine so I do a search for it on the site
Along with information on the wine, I see two critics have reviewed Ghost Pines, Sarah and David. Since I like the wine and they like the wine, I can now go into my profile and change their influence on my profile to High. I can also read all of their reviews and choose a wine that way, because if they like it, I can surmise there’s a chance I would like it too – similar tastes and all that (plus the Ghost Pines had the best label of the night – just sayin)
Not only that, but I can see if it’s available at my nearest LCBO and how many bottles are left. AND there’s images for most of the bottles so I’m not left wandering around the store praying my children won’t accidentally push the shopping cart into one of the diplays. They also came out with this kick-ass Top 50 Value Picks which is how I'll be choosing the wine we gift this Christmas (I'm frugal, what can I say?)
If you want to try it out you can register with WineAlign. Use the promo code YMC when you sign up and you'll get two FREE months of their premium service.
And no, sadly this isn’t a sponsored blog. I just really really love the site. And if I wasn’t knee deep in bad parenting experiences this week, I’d be on top of it and have already download the mobile app too. But at least last night after the kids went to bed, I was able to enjoy a nice glass of Ghost Pines.
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