The two worlds collided the other night when I tried to photograph a bottle of Fairbanks California Port wine for this post. Here is the result:
Pretty cute, huh?
Wish I could say the bottle of wine was as much fun.
I read somewhere that port wine is sweet, and as I’ve mentioned in other posts about the various red wines I’ve been trying, sweet is what I’m after. Fairbanks California Port doesn’t have any fancy marketing blurbs on the back of the bottle about how it’ll enhance your meal or outing or life. That might have been my first clue that this was a “real” wine, but I didn’t catch that until I tried a glass of it.
The label says it is superbly rich and full-bodied. I now know that those adjectives describe a taste that is much too strong for my palate. My first taste made me flinch. After the overpowering “full-bodied” taste overwhelmed me, I tasted the sweetness, but it was too late by then. And, if it is possible, it was too sweet.
Two ways of describing the taste came to mind and they both fall short, but I’ll give them to you anyway. For the initial full-bodied shock factor, think about how the first sip of black Starbucks coffee tastes (yuck! pass the cream and pink stuff please), followed quickly by the taste of Kool-Aid with twice as much sugar as any human has ever consumed in one glass. Combined, the two tastes are enough to rattle your eyeballs.
At least I learned something. When I went to the store on Sunday afternoon to pick up a few groceries I notice a few bottles of wine that said they are medium-bodied. So, that must mean light-bodied wines exist, although I didn’t see any. I did find a website that talks about the three types and it compares full-bodied wine to cream, medium-bodied wine to regular milk (I’m not sure what that is), and light-bodied wine to 1% or 2% milk. At the very least, I learned not to get full-bodied or medium-bodied wine.
How about you? Have you been experimenting with different types of wine? Or do you have a favorite you’d like to tell me about? So far, I’ve jotted down the following suggestions from the comments section: Liberty Creek Sweet Red, Kenwood Pinoir Noir and Benzinger Pinoir Noir.
