The Wine Appreciation Group

Leader:  Annie Scotney - wine@ashbyu3a.co.uk -

WINE APPRECIATION GROUP

The objective of the group is to widen the members’ experience of wines and all matters pertaining to wines. Annie Scotney has agreed to be the initial leader of the group and to coordinate meetings. The group began by simply gathering together to discuss personal favourite wines, bringing a bottle with them to provide a small taste. We are currently tasting a choice of wines bought by a different member each month. Those present at the tasting share the cost.

If you are interested in joining us please contact Annie at wine@ashbyu3a.co.uk.

We currently meet on the third Wednesday of the month at 7pm.

20th March

This month Ken had brought along a selection of four Portuguese red wines all purchased from Laithwaites Wines. All the wines were 2021 vintage and ranged in price from £10 to £12, and all tended to be on the darker end of the redness scale.

Portuguese wines are becoming quite fashionable both for their quality and value for money. I notice a quite a few showing up on supermarket shelves lately although most of them are in the £8 range which is fast becoming the norm for wines these days unfortunately. So our wines were dearer than that but hopefully they would be worth that extra few pounds.

We started with a wine made from the Castelão grape called Rainha do Mar from Setubal which is just south of Lisbon. This was an easy-drinking wine, not exceptional but would be excellent with a BBQ if only we had some suitable weather to hold one! 7.5/10

Next was Amoras, a Castelão blend from just north of Lisbon. This was dark red but not purple, more of a reddish brown, having a rich but not heavy taste. Medium bodied. Very fruity with flavours of damson and berries with some vanilla. Very nice and silky smooth and well liked by almost everyone. It scored 8/10.

Third was Vilarissa Valley from the Douro. This 14% ABV wine was very dark almost black, with an intense dark berry flavour, quite spicy and almost Port-like in taste. Very, very smooth. Everyone liked this wine and thought it was dangerously easy-drinking considering its alcoholic strength! This scored 8.5/10

Lastly came the dearest at £12. Vinho do Fava from Setubal again, this was, if possible, even blacker than the last wine. Made from Portugal's most prized Touriga Nacional grape which is used to make Port wines, but here making a table wine. This wine has won awards including Best Portuguese Wine from the Independent newspaper. It has huge flavour and richness, dark and velvety with aromas of bramble, blackcurrant and plum. The taste was almost too strong for me personally but almost everyone else loved it. It too scored 8.5/10

This was a very interesting session as most of us had no real knowledge of Portuguese wines outside of Port on the one hand, or light white Vinho Verde on the other.

We won't be meeting in April as Annie is not available.