Boxed Wine Basics

You’ve probably seen them at your local wine or liquor store: cardboard boxes filled with wine, often being carried out by embarrassed shoppers wearing sunglasses to hide their identities. Okay, at least I’ve seen them. 

Boxed wines, or “casks” as they’re sometimes referred to, have a bit of a reputation for being the tacky sort of thing your alcoholic aunt might purchase. Fortunately, the times are changing! 

Here are a few good reasons to consider buying boxed wine:

Review of Panama Jack's cocktails: Margarita & Long Island Iced Tea

Happy Wine Wednesday!

Last week, Panama Jack’s released their newest wine-based cocktails: Margarita and Long Island Iced Tea. They’re available to taste right now at The Wine Shop in Ontario, but in the mean time, here’s a review of both products.

New Year, New Vintage: Trius White 2012

To kick off the new year, Trius has released the new 2012 vintage of their classic Trius White. 

In the fall, I took a tour of the Trius at Hillebrand winery and tasted Trius White 2011. It was my favourite wine of the day. So, how does the new vintage compare? 

Wine Lingo, Part 2

Happy Wine Wednesday! As promised, here is a continuation of my previous post on wine terms. 

Finish: the lingering flavour and sensation of the wine after drinking. It can be short, long, dry, complex…you get the idea.

Ice wine, or “Icewine”: a sweet dessert wine made from frozen grapes. They can be red or white depending on the grapes used. Ice wines are usually a fair bit more expensive than other wines because of the strict conditions required to make them, but it's worth it. 

Nose: the overall smell or aroma of the wine. 

Sugar scale: a numerical system used to describe how dry or sweet a wine tastes, with 0 being the most dry. This system is being phased out and replaced with the more vague qualitative categories of extra dry, dry, off-dry, medium sweet, and sweet. 

From the LCBO website. 

Tannins: more common in reds, tannins are what make your mouth pucker after taking a sip and make a wine taste more dry or bitter. Tannins come from contact with the grapes’ seeds, skins, stems, and sometimes wooden barrels that the wine is aged in.

Varietal: the type of grape (or grapes, if it's a blend) used in a wine. Different appellations are conducive to growing different kinds of grapes, which is why some areas are known for a certain type of wine.

Vintage: the year the grapes were harvested in. Not all wines specify the vintage, because sometimes they use grapes from different years and hope that no one will notice the difference. 

VQA (Canada only): stands for Vintner’s Quality Alliance. In Ontario, a VQA wine must use 100% Ontario grapes and jump through a series of hoops before they get to put a special sticker on the bottle. 

I'll keep adding terms as I think of them. Next up: a review of the brand new Trius White 2012!