I’m writing this Wednesday evening, on the train ride home. It’s 47 degrees outside. It’s supposed to get down to 30 tonight, and there’s a strong possiblity of snow tomorrow morning. This is going to be a hard Chicago winter.
Wine and winter go together like peanut butter and jelly. It warms you up, flushes your cheeks, and makes the grey crappy skys not matter so much. It’s like a tanning bed for your guts. Camri and I are red wine fans. No doubt about it.
We wrote this review a few months ago about a new grape variety we’d never tried before called Nero d’ Avola. At the time, we weren’t crazy about it. We thought it was too smoky. That was more than 10 months ago. Since then, we’ve had a bottle or two of that specific wine, and a few with Nero d’ Avola grapes. This is a wild predicition, but I really think we’re going to drink a lot of this stuff this winter. It’s very warm, smoky, with a lot of complicated stuff going on. In general, the combination of “complex”, “warm”, and “smoky” jumps out as being ideal winter red wines. Here’s one more from our teeny tiny review database that fits that bill, Santa Rita.
As for whites, it’s really new territory for us. Living in a German influenced neighborhood, we’ve tried our share of Rieslings. Our favorite, both for taste and awesome black cat bottle design is Zeller Schwarze Katz. Another distinctly winter wine is “ice wine.” We’ve never tried one, so we can’t comment. The theory is, they leave the grapes on the vine during the winter, allow the juice to freeze, and then press them. The ice crystals pull a lot of the moisture out of the grape, so the wine is very thick and sweet. Buying a bottle of real ice wine is on our list of things to try this winter.
To review, here’s the wikipedia pages on each of the varieties we’re recommending for winter…
Updated to add: It’s 9:25 am, Thursday morning. I’m on the 12th floor with a view of the Chicago River. It is snowing like crazy out there.
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