As I drove from St. Louis to Kansas City yesterday on I-70, I nearly stopped at a roadside vineyard called Stone Hill, but time was tight because I had a business lunch to attend in Jefferson City, so I had to pass it. But one of these days, I'm going to stop at a place like that and just put myself in the hands of someone who knows and understands wine.
My doctor recently suggested again that drinking a glass or two of red wine once in a while would be good for me. Thing is, red wine doesn't taste good to me. I favor the sweetest tasting white wine possible -- wines like Arbor Mist and Boone's Farm. I've been doing a little investigating about the differences between white and red wines and I found this tidbit from WineIntro.com:
"As a bit of background, the tannic, leathery flavor of red wine comes from the red grape skins. All grape 'insides' are white in color. So a red wine that only uses the skins briefly during winemaking -- like a white zinfandel -- is going to generally be less tannic and more sweet. It will also be light in color, since the color comes from the grape skins. A wine that sits on the skins for a long time during winemaking will end up darker in color, more tannic -- and more healthy. That's because many of the health compounds in a wine come from its skin."
So, more tannic means more healthy. That's good to know. Now I just need to figure out the taste thing. A while back I bought a bottle of Barefoot Zinfandel. I poured a glass and sat back to watch a television show. I couldn't finish it. It was anti-sweet, sour, even. The one thing it had going for it was, the alcohol taste wasn't overwhelming.
I stuck a cork in the bottle and thought I'd probably dump it out, but I stuck it in the refrigerator instead. I just pulled it back out gave it another taste. It wasn't as bad as I remembered. Then I discovered I've had the opened (corked) bottle of wine in my refrigerator for over a year. According to most wine websites I just looked at, they say opened bottles of wine are only good for up to three days.
So, the taste of this particular wine bottle no longer represents how it tasted when I opened it initially. That's too bad because I found the old, flat wine more tolerable. Oh well. I picked up two new bottles of red wine at the grocery store this afternoon, so the quest to find a good, sweet bottle of red wine will continue. If you have any suggestions, please offer away.
