Good Grape Wine Company

July 3 2006

Wine Sediments

I have my weekly post on Wine Sediments posted here.  In honor of the 4th of July I take a quick round-up of typical long weekend summer activities:  camping, bbq, baseball with a vinous bent and I include a link to a recipe for Blueberry wine. 

Yesterday, I went over to my brother’s house.  He’s a good amateur chef and generally turns out very nice foodstuff’s for guests.  I had visions of pairing the Trader Joe’s Amarone and the Trader Joe’s Ripasso with some hearty bbq fare—a smoked Boston butt for pulled pork, smoked pork spare ribs and a grilled tenderloin bathed in a sweetly hot bbq sauce from a Michigan company called Cherry Republic that does a slew of products with cherries.

I figured that the Amarone is a heavy, dense wine made for red meat, so the smoking would translate for the pork and the Ripasso is made from grapes in the Italian DOC Valpolicella that is fermented, then aged in barrels ontop of Amarone lees, which add some texture and flavor inexpensively.

Alas, both wines were exceptionally disappointing.  I decanted both of them and the Amarone was done in the hour it was decanted and the Ripasso never got started in order to be done.  The Ripasso was thin, short and flabby.  I swore to myself I would never use the word flabby to refer to a wine, but this one fits the bill.   My two cents:  skip both at TJ’s and go for the Rabbit Ridge Zinfandel, which I passed over in favor of adventure. 

Posted in, Wine Sediments. Permalink | Comments (0) |

Print

Comments