What Would Jesus Brew? » Blog Archive Mystery Wine Evening

tagged: banana, blackberry, cranberry, mead, pine, runner bean, tea, Wine

Mystery Wine Evening

Last week we had our wine tasing evening to finally crack open some of the mystery wines that have been tucked away my shed for the last few years. The usual suspects turned up – Fendog, the Geek, Ginger Gibbon, Face-ache, Ding Dong, Pretty Boy and Bungle.

A fine evening was had by all and the wines were… what shall we say?… interesting.
Below is a summary of the tasting notes from the evening. They grew increasingly incoherent and illegible as the evening wore on, but I think I have got the jist of most of them. I have several bottles af all of these wines left, so if you fancy a sample, just let me know!

	Runner Bean 2007 I remember trying this a few years ago when it had been in the bottle less than a year. As I recall, it was rough as a badger's arse. We hoping it had improved with age. The colour was interesting amber - like freshly pressed apple juice. It smelt exactly like cheap sherry. The taste was not far off that too. The distnctive aftertase puzzled us for a few minutes until Ding Dong nailed it - Tiramasu! Good call.
	Cranberry Wine A lovely red colour and an intense, fresh berry aroma. The taste was lush with that spike of acidity you might expect from cranberries. Not a bad drop of country wine.
	Green Stuff There's no getting around it, this stuff looked unatural. It was a just a little bit TOO green. I 'm sure by the end of the evening I noticed it glowing slightly in the dark. It smelt distinctly medicinal, and it tasted.... interesting! I wish I had taken a video clip of people's facial expressions when they tried it.
	Blackberry Wine Smelt like Ribena. Not any of your lesser blackcurrant squashes: Ribena. Without a doubt. Unfortunately, the smell was the best bit. However, by the fourth sip, the tastebuds were sufficiently numbed to make this wine almost pallatable.
	Trenchfoot's Mead This bottle was unmarked and its contents a mystery. A sniff from the bottle gave the wonderfully vanilla ice-cream aroma. However, once in the glass, a quick taste assured us that it was unmistakably from my missing batch of mead. Just like the last time we tried it, it was deliciously sweet and complex. It was syrupey with good legs - definitely a dessert wine; you couldn't drink too much of it. But it was excellent and got rave reviews.
	Pinapple liqueur Another unmarked bottle, this time smelling like boiled sweets. A taste confirmed it was my pineapple liqueur, although it wasn't obvious as you might think. It was strong stuff and tended cause slight wincing if taken in anything more than a small sip. Pretty Boy took this home with him on his bike and he has not been seen since.
	Tea wine 2006 As you might expect this one looked like iced tea with an aroma to match.Although I made it with Chinese jasmine tea, I couldn't detect much of the floral persuasion in the wine. The taste was inoffensive but unimpressive producing mixed reviews from our panel. The verdict: "like weak tea with an edge".
	Unidentified white Another unmarked bottle and this time much for difficult to draw any firm conclusions about its contents. Upon uncorking there was a faint pop and the wine was slightly sparkling betraying a posibe malolactic fermentation, though it was not unpleasant as a result. Rather it was the smell and taste that made it unplesant. The aroma was unmistakable - permenant maker. It tasted of off fruit with a hint of vinegar. I'm thinking this must have been my Pineapple Wine .
	Banana Wine We were totally loving the luscious banana aromas - like an explosion in a Nesquik factory. The taste, however, didn't quite live up to the promise made by the nose. The reviews from our expert tasters covered the whole spectrum, from "repugnant", through "not disguisting", to "delicious".
	Homemade Absynthe The intense blue-green colour was disturbingly reminiscent of anti-freeze, but the smell and taste was just like proper absynthe. It was noticeable not as strong as the stuff Knuckles brought back from Portugal (70% ABV) which left the Outlaw without vision for two days, but that is not a bad thing. For some bizarre reason, the lads insisted on drinking it neat rather than the traditional way with sugar and ice water, which to my mind makes it a very pleasant apperitif as apposed to a viscious throat-burning hallucinogen.