Out of the Gate

For years I drank wine without giving it too much thought. Other than knowing it was a red or white I didn't really know or care to know much more. That recently changed, and I started to try and learn more about the wines I liked versus those that I didn't like. I started to get more and more curious about different wine regions, grapes, storing wine, etc.

I began reviewing wines that I've tried, anywhere from sampling to drinking a lot of, in February of this year. Since that time I have personally recorded notes and rating on the wines I have tried. I started to understand what I like an what I don't like. I'm not sure if I should put all my reviews to date on here, or just start with new reviews. I'll give you a sample:

Tasted June 2011: La Vieille Ferme Recolte 2009 $11.95 (in Ontario). This was an excellent wine from the Rhone Valley in France. A mixture of four different grapes. I thoroughly enjoyed the smooth taste of plum, cherry and apricot. I had it the next day after not taking the air out and it wasn’t as good, but still satisfying. JC92

By the way, the JC## is my rating system. If I really like a wine, I will give it 90 or above. If I think the wine is vey good, but not excellent, I will give it 85-89. If the wine is decent, it gets 82-84. If I don't like the wine, it gets 80 or 81. You may think that this is an odd rating system, since 80/100 still sounds pretty good. Well, it's odd to me as well, however I'm trying to base my system on the one that a number of professional wine tasters use, including the Wine Align website.

I will end my first blog post with a couple of links that I enjoy.
http://www.winealign.com/
http://www.winefox.com/