Meeting No 31, 18th December 2010

A festive occasion even down to a fairly heavy snow fall the previous evening which made the roads somewhat treacherous, however June and Ray had prepared a lovely Christmas spread to accompany our wine tasting and a contrasting choice of wine helped to add to a very entertaining evening. The first wine was certainly very different – appearance was fine – a bright clear dark red but from then on the comments were towards the negative. There was certainly nothing festive in the smell or taste instead comments such as nondescript, bland, slightly tart, no real length of flavour and very light. Perhaps no real surprise to find that it was not from one of the recognised wine producing areas but was a 2008 Medina Syrah from Malta – cost around £2.00. and perhaps no surprise either that no one was able to guess the origin. Overall score was 6.5. The second wine was much more to the liking of the group which was reflected in an overall score of 7.9. This wine had very dark red appearance, a strong nose of dark fruit damson, plum, and black cherry. The taste was well balanced with a little sweetness at the front of the tongue – a medium to heavy wine with all the dark fruit flavours with a hint of vanilla and some peppery tones. The wine is available from ASDA at £6.50.

We start 2011 with our first meeting at Mike and Pam’s on Jan 18th at 14:00