Monday 26 April 2010

Wine tasting in Sonoma - Part 1 Ravenswood


At the monent, we're in California, staying with friends in San Francisco and yesterday we took a trip to Sonoma to visit some vineyards.


Our first stop was Ravenswood In the UK we only see one of their wines, the Lodi Zinfandel which I like so I was keen to see more.
The tasting room is on top of a small hill, with a long bar to stand at while you taste and helpful staff. The lady we spoke to helpfully gave us discount vouchers for a few other wineries, which definitely influenced the itenerary!

There are 2 tasting menu options. We tried the Single Vineyard Designate Tasting flight, choosing 5 wines out of the 7 to taste for $15. The other option is the County Tasting, 5 wines for $10.
Skipping over the Chardonnay, we headed straight for the first of a trio of Zinfndels, the 2007 Chauvret (100% Zin). This was lighter in colour and body than you'd expect but full of sweet cherry flavour and with a spicy finish.
The 2007 Big River Zinfandel (100% Zin) was a much more "typical" example, lots of black cherry and very jammy with a nice hint of spice and oak. This was my favourite of the three.
The third one was Mike's favourite, the 2007 Belloni. This has 77% Zin and the rest is mixed black grapes which obviously add to the complexity and in this case, the tannin as well. It tasted very rich and juicy, with spicy black fruits.
Next up was the 2005 Bedrock Cabernet. The tasting notes described this as smelling like cherry liquer which was quite accurate, it had the slightly honeyed notes of a dessert wine but on the taste was all blackberries and spice.
The final we tried here was a dessert wine, the 2008 Moscato Leggaro, which was delicious. It was very slighty sparking and smells of pineapple with just a hint of green apples and tastes of rich ripe tropical fruit and honey. Just the thing for drinking on a warm summer's day. We liked this so much we bought a bottle.

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