starting our journey through 365 days of sweet and fruit wines under $20

JANUARY 15, 2009 DAY 1-ALMOND INFUSION-AUGUST HILL WINERY, UTICA, ILLINOIS-$16.95I am starting a blog to pass along the information and knowledge I have acquired while tasting wines throughout the state of Illinois. Wine is no longer just for the rich and the variety of wines that are on the market lend itself to mass confusion and buying of a lot of expensive, but maybe not so tasy wines. I am my better half started drinking wine in response to Troy's stomach difficulties with beer. However, all the wines we have ever tried in our history consisted of Boone's farm Strawberry Hill which we liked and Mad Dog 20/20 which we did not like. And over our 3 yrs together we have found many sweet and fruits wines that we have liked, verusus the dry wines which we do not like. There are wines that make you more thirsty, wines that need to be paired with food, and these are the wines that we do not like and do not drink. We like to drink wine, and we drink the wine for the sake of tasting the wine, not to improve the taste of the food, or to intake more water. We drink fruit wines, sweet wines, ports, and port-style wines that are all wonderful by themselves and are $20 or under! Today we will be drinking the sparkling almond wine out of August Hill Winery called Almond Infusion, we are members of the sweet wine club of August Hill, and this was one of the November's New Releases and wine of the month. We have had this wine previously, once we tried it at the winery, we hadn't opened it as of yet and all I can say is Wow! This is the best almond sparkling wine around! And this wine prices out a $16.95 at August Hill! We have tried the JJJ Almond sparkling which is good and very reasonable- I think you can get it at Binny's at under $8 a bottle. We have also tried the CooperHawk Almond Sparkling which is also good and is around $14.99 a bottle. However, there is no comparison with the Almond Infusion of August Hill Winery it is like a light almond cookie, slightly sweet, great smell, gentle bubbles, and very smooth finish. Needless to say, if you like the flavor of almond this wine wil be a winner for you.