From the Bar – some new wines and beers

We’ve tried some new wines and beers recently.  One does need fortification when dealing with endless silliness in this blog’s comments. No, don’t go look.  You’ll regret it  🙂

First wine up is Covey Run Red Blend.  We both like red blends since you can get exactly what the wine maker wants rather than depending on one variety of grapes to shoulder the entire load.  It has a strong blackberry scent and taste, reminding me of my grandma’s blackberry pie.  It’s just barely sweet to our tastes.  It does have quite a soft mouth feel, more on the merlot side than a feisty cab.

The second wine is a  Mavrodaphne of Patras.   Alas, I recycled the bottle before remembering the brand name. This is a sweet Greek desert wine.   It strikes me as looking like a ruby port but tasting more like a tawny port, with the raisiny and toffee flavors.  We both like ports, though evidently my palate isn’t sensitive enough to really see a difference between a “new” port and one 20 years old.   My wallet surely does though.   This bottle ran about $13 at the local Pennsylvania state liquor store.   It’s definitely worth a try if you like ports and fortified wines.  Winter’s coming and provides a wonderful excuse to induldge in rich things.

For the beers, we recently returned to Appalachian Brewing Company here in town.  They finally returned the poutine to the menu, which is cause for celebration!  Along with their Hefeweizen, I had a snifter of their barleywine.  Not exactly a summer drink, it was very sweet, very rich with lots of toffee notes and I do want more when the weather turns colder.  I think it would be quite nice warmed.

In the interim, we got a case of Bell’s Best Brown Ale.  I do have a fondness for brown ales and this one is very good.  It has a strong caramel scent but not sweet at all.  A good dose of hops keep the caramel from being too cloying.

That’s all for now. Eat and drink well!