Wine: Ma Cherie

So this wine isn't part of the Fresh and Easy grocery hall. It's actually just a part of me wanting to buy a white wine with a pretty label.

Be weary of impulse buys based on labels.

The wine is a Chardonnay, Viognier, and Grenache blend which sounds good.

And I mean it wasn't terrible, just different. It was buttery like a Chardonnay but grassy and herbaceous like a Sauvignon Blanc. Overall I would rate it a 2, out of 5. It was interesting and different but I wouldn't buy it again. There was a rough alcohol taste around the edges so it wasn't a smooth wine. Semi dry.

Although we could have accidentally aerated it when the Husband put it in the decanter [it had a lot of bubbles]. So maybe second chances are due...

Speaking Of decanter, check it out! It's actually a white wine chiller! Pretty awesome, don't you think?

How do you drink white wine; chilled in anther receptacle or out of the bottle?

Wine: Quady Winery & Quady North

Quady Winery is a Madera, CA winery that specializes in desert wines and has been producing since 1975. I recently went with a friend to their tasting room to sample their wines. Quady was also represented at the 2012 Fig Festival at CSU Fresno in early August.

We were pleasantly surprised to experience what I liken to be the "Nose to tail" drinking experience of vino.

We sampled all three of Quady's Vya aperitifs: extra dry, whisper dry, and sweet vermouth. The whisper dry was excellent, medium dryness and invoked the reminiscent flavored of a martini with herbaceous notes. I think it would pair nicely with salty crackers and olives. The sweet vermouth was delicious and rich, sweet, and had notes of orange, orange zest, cinnamon and clove. It's definitely a nice desert wine to finish a meal but is very robust.

We then tried a blend of the extra dry and sweet Vya. It was an amazing combination of spice, sweet, and dry. It literally tasted like autumn, like being wrapped in a blanket, sitting in candlelight during a thunderstorm. Okay, so maybe that's the ideal way I would drink this wine, because it invokes that sort of mood. But it had nice notes of spice and caramel and was deliciously dry and smooth.

From there we tasted the wines of which included the 2010 Viognier, 2011 Rosè Grenache, and a 2009 Syrah.

The Viognier was very smooth and fruity, with subtle melon and apricot notes. It was more sweet than dry.

The Rosè was dryer than the Viognier and had pronounced rose flavored and aromas. Definitely a nice dry summer wine.

The Syrah was nice red with spicey pepper notes, blackberries and cherry with a smooth finish.


At this point we moved on to sweet wines that we hadn't tried at Quady.

Purple, a concord grape wine, lives up to its description: a sweet burst of grape jolly rancher flavor. I likened it to grape juice for adults.

Deviation, a sweet wine made from orange muscat with geranium and damiana. This wine was truly special. It had amazing notes of orange blossom honey and small notes of pineapple. Its smooth, and in a desert wine league of its own.

We finished off the tasting with Electra Slushies. Omg. Wine slushies, so delish! Why wasn't this invented sooner?!

When we left I felt I had been given a "three course meal" of wine, with an appetizer (the aperitifs), a main course (Quady North), and then of course, desert (Quady's desert wines of course!).

I don't normally give ratings but maybe I should start. 5/5 hands down. I think the thing that makes me truly give that rating is the friend I taste with never purchases wine when we taste, when I on the other hand throw my wallet at people. They actually purchased 6 bottles this time around. Actions do speak louder than words!