Saturday 22 September 2012

Out of our comfort zone!

Tonight my parents hosted our Wine Evening and the theme was wines from different countries such as Greece, Germany, Portugal etc. The banned list consisted of France, Spain, Italy, the USA, South Africa, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand and Australia.

Eight of us walked up in the dusky evening (it's really quite dark by 7.30pm now) and I was looking forward to seeing some different wines over the evening. Mum and Dad served cocktails to the ladies and beer to the men and then we settled down to taste some wines. Amazingly, we had three Greek whites, one of which unfortunately was corked. The wine I chose, a white from Santorini at a whopping 14.5% was delicious so I may well be heading back to Waitrose to buy another bottle. One couple who had recently returned from Kefalonia bought a bottle of the local white which was also very good. We also had an English white wine which was crisp and fruity but I'm never convinced that our own wines deserve their hefty price tag!

After a break for some truly delicious food, we started on the reds, one of which was my Chinese wine, which was surprisingly good! The other reds included two from Lebanon and a Hungarian wine that was on the tannic side.

As it's Keith's birthday on Monday Mum and Dad gave him a big gooey chocolate cake and we served the last wine of the evening with that, a Hungarian dessert wine which was gorgeous, and this actually won overall!

It was a great evening but I have to say I was a wee bit disappointed with the wines. Now I think I know why we tend to buy our wines from the "banned" list. They really do produce crowd pleasers!

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