Santa Picks GREG NORMAN ESTATES Limestone Coast SHIRAZ 2000
Last Saturday night we had our first annual wine tasting party. I think the event was inspired partly because we have made our own wine 2 years in a row and we wanted a reason to make our friends drink it and partly because we haven't had a party in a while and it seemed like a good idea. I printed up a lot of invitations because the date of the event was so close to Christmas I though we would get a lot of "sorry we can't make it because of....." . Which is totally understandable as it is a very busy time of year. Half of the invitations requested the guest bring a bottle of Shiraz and the other half Chardonnay (that’s what we made this year). I bought a bunch of not bad wineglasses at Home Outfitters (12 for $9.99) and a “glass pen” from the “WineKitz” stores (a pen that writes on glass not a pen made of glass). Instead of using wine charms we wrote everyone’s name on their glass and they got to take it home with them as a gift. We ended up with about a dozen guests, 5 bottles of red and 8 bottles of white.
I handed out notepads and pencils and wrapped each bottle in a brown paper bag and numbered them.
All that was left to do was to drink:) First off, the wine we made sucked. It's not something I was aware of until I compared it to good wines of the same variety. I
Amongst the whites there was no clear-cut winner and it was quite obvious that our tasters taste buds were becoming impaired. It turned out that bottles 1 & 2 were the same wine:) and by the time our tasters got to bottle #8 it was a nice white blur. (Next year I think I will just pick one type of wine) The food was simple yet fun with lots of different types of cheese, crackers, lots of berries, Christmas tangerines, pecans, cookies, veggies, chicken wings, Prochuto and pate. I think a good time was had by all and I'm looking forward to the 2nd annual wine tasting party. I highly recommend an event like this to anyone who enjoys wine. Cheers!
