Friday, May 29, 2009

The sixth wine tasting with Poolia

All the previous wine tastings have always been with friends, or people that I've met more than once before. The sixth wine tasting however was with a recruiting company called Poolia, where a friend of mine works. We were 12 people in total, a mix of Poolia employees and their partners. We only tasted six wines for the night, but all in all I thought it went really well, or so it usually does after the first two wines.

The wines we had were from Argentina, Chilé and South Africa and all of them were single variety wines, meaning no blends. Two bottles of Merlot to start off with, then a Malbec and three bottles of Pinotage in the end.

I am as you may know a Pinotage fan, when it's done in the traditional way. I am not a fan of some of these new styles of easy drinking Pinotage wines you find on the shelves these days. Pinotage is supposed to be strong, dark and heavy and not everyone is supposed to like it, at first that is. You need to sweeten it a bit with food or cheese, because only then does it start to grow on you, to the point of loving the smell and the taste. The highlight of the night was a bottle of Pinotage from South Africa called Cafe Culture. This Pinotage however is very easy drinking and smells like mocha coffee. You can read more about my thoughts on the wine here, because it is a wine that most loved at the start and hated at the end of the night.

The other wines for the night were really good, and my favourite was a bottle of Anura Merlot 2007. Really smooth and very creamy.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Am enjoying reading about your experiences with wine. I manage a restaurant called the 3 Fat Fish, and we have aroun 150 different wines on our award winning wine list.
Will share some interesting pairings with you in the future.