Day 95-American Sparkling Cherry Wine Doux by Lynfred Winery for $25

solThis wine is over the $20 dollar mark however if you buy a case you get 25% off which makes it under $20. This wine is a very interesting combination of 60% cherry wine, 15% Chardoney, 15% Pinot Grigio, and 10% Chenin Blanc. This wine was recommended of all the sparkling wines at Lynfred as being the sweetest. However, after tasting the sparkling Rose and this wine, I am sold on their sparkling wines as being great summer wines. This wine taste like pure cherries so it has some tartness and great fizz. This wine was even liked by my better half who does not like cherries. This is a bottle of wine that needs to be finished the day you open it or you lose the fizz that makes it such a great sparkling wine. I can't wait to buy their peach and their berry sparkling wines now, they are truly the perfect summer wines. I am not sure if you would pair them with the meal, but with cheese and fruit and dessert, absolutely perfect. I think these a great wines to swap out instead of the traditional Moscato di'Asti, but Moscato di'Asti is significantly cheaper.

Day 94-Moscato 2007-Village Vintner for $14.99

The winery states they created this wine in response to the desire of the frequenters of the establishment. I brought this wine with the sparkling rose to the party and drank this after the sparkling rose, so I am a little foggy on the descriptors of this wine. It was popular with the guests, but most of them were dry wine drinkers so the moscato was a little too sweet for them. I liked the moscato with its peach flavors, it is light and sweet the perfect summer wine. This wine will be brought to many parties because it is a crowd pleaser and it is a reasonable price.

Day 93-Sparkling Rose Brut- Lynfred Winery for $17 for the month of june

When a sparkling wine says it is Brut I picture a very dry wine. I brought this wine to a party and it was great. It is not as sweet as Rosa Regale but you could taste the various strawberry and raspberry flavors in the wine. It is lovely color with very good bubbles and fizz, everyone at the party liked the wine, and I had a few glasses my self. I am going to buy this wine again, I can't believe how light and fruity the wine was, and feel this a great summer wine and if the price was cut in half I would buy it by the case. I challenge anyone to find a better Rose. This needs to be served ice cold, but I had it just cold and it was still probably the best sparkling Rose to me.

Day 92-Black Razzy by the Ackerman Winery- $6,00 for 375mg or half bottle

This wine is made of 100% Black Raspberries. This wine is very dark almost black in color with some legs. This wine is very balanced with both sweetness and tartness. This wine could be spritzed with club soda to give it a lighter flavor. This wine would go great with cheesecake and with chocolate. Troy really liked this wine and I thought it was just ok. I am finding some of the fruit wines to be just very one dimensional. I would have spritzed this wine if I were take it to a party and serve it with dessert. I would probably not buy this wine again simply because I did not find the wine to be very versatile, however the half bottle is a nice size for a wine that is for desserts.

Day 91-Pomegranate Wine by Cooperhawk Winery for $13.99

This wine was bought last month when we did our monthly tasting at the Cooperhawk in South Barrington. We tried this wine since they were out of the Plum wine. My better half absolutely loved this wine and we bought the last bottle they had in the store. I have recently seen this wine at the Cooperhawk in Wheeling, so he has nothing to worry about, there isn't a shortage of the wine or anything to that effect. This wine is sweet, but after being chilled in the refrigerator over the last couple of days the wine is tasting a little more tart and I think getting bad with the vinegar smell and flavor, hence I am finishing the wine off as I type. I forgot we had this wine as I bemoan having only reds for summertime, however, we recently got a cold, rainy front so the reds are looking ok currently, and when I opened it I never thought Troy would be able to guess what wine it was, but he did. This wine is made from two pounds of pomegranate however, since I have not eaten a pomegranate since I was younger, I am not sure I can distinguish it from other fruit, however if my better half knew it, you may be able to pick it out also. It is a pretty red/orange color similar to the strawberry zin previously blogged. This wine could be a good party wine, however there are a lot of fruit wines I like better, if I am going to bring a fruit wine at a few dollars less. I like the blended fruit wines from the Village Vintner as some of the best party wines since they are generally very mellow.

Day 90-Strawberry Zin from Door County Peninsula Winery $15.99 in Long Grove, Ill

This wine was bought while at the chocolate fest in Long Grove this month. The wine is described as a medium dry grape with strawberry flavor. I was afraid this wine was going to be extremely dry, and I was wrong. This wine is beautiful orange/pink with a stong strawberry aroma and flavor. It was a beautiful sunny day today and we drank this wine as we worked in the garden. It is a wine that could be paired with dessert or with cheeses, either way in order to like this wine you need to like strawberries. This wine is a much better quality wine compared to Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill, but they are in the same ballpark of wine. This wine would be great a party if it was not so pricey. I am not sure why it is so pricey, I know Long Grove tends to run on the expensive side, however I have seen these wines at Binny's and I still think they run around $13-$14 dollars a bottle.

Day 89-2006 Petit Syrah by Micheal and David $15 at Binnys

This wine was a Mother's Day gift from Troy wine 6 bottle wine rack, plus a case of wine which does not count since it was a 25% discount at Lynfred. This wine has the cutest label with 2 elephants on it who are drinking wine and are shown to be part of a circus. This notes on the back are very cute describing the tricks of the elephants, and their bragging rights regarding their trunks. I brought this wine to Katie's birthday party also since they like dry reds. They were a big fan, and I like Petite Syrah, late harvest generally, but Petite Syrah is my favorite red grape. This wine is good, went excellent with cheeses they served and was overall a very good conversational piece due to the bottle. I would buy this wine again, generally I don't think it is a very good party wine it is relatively high in alcohol at about 13% and is dry which is just too much on a summer day. Like I said, I have too much red wine for the summer temperatures outside and I am down to my last 2 bottles of white wine. Everyone would kill me if I tried to buy another case of white wine, but my birthday is coming up and I am thinking that it may be must since all I have are reds, fruits, chocolate infused fruit wine, and dessert wines, I may just have to splurge for the right price.

Day 88-2008 American Pinot Grigio by Lynfred Winery for $20 available to the public in July 2009

This wine was the April wine of the month for Lynfred's White Wine Club. This is a dry white wine, with a great aroma, so I brought it to the Birthday party of Katie who likes dry wine this last Saturday. I had already had some wine throughout the day, so I was liking wine a bit much to be totally objective about this wine. I found this wine to be a lot better than when we tasted it, my fruit forward and mellow. Like I said, I was already buzzed when drinking this wine, but Maggie not a huge fan of white wines also said it was good wine. This type of wine requires food or a buzz to mellow out the wine and bringing out its flavors versus focusing on its dryness. I would buy htis wine again not for myself, but for a dinner party. Not a regular party because it is too pricey, but when the company knows wine and you are pairing the wine with food this is a quality choice.

Day 87-Vignoles by Willett's Winery Cellar of Manito, Illinois by $11.99

We bought this wine on our visit down to the country last week. This is a semi-sweet white wine with hints of pineapple and apricot according to the Vintner. This is the winery owned by Dan who was very nice and gave us the history of his winery. This is a dry wine that I am drinking to celebrate the agreeing on signing the contract for $120,000 for a town home in Schaumburg. This wine is slightly dry with a lot fruit flavors. The wine is gold in color, and is definitely a Rachel type of wine since it does not have the residual sweetness of a niagara or moscato which are the favorites of my better half. I am busy talking with my sister throughout drinking this wine, which nakes talking with her more dealable since she is very controversial.

Day 86-Raspberry Wine from the Village Vintner at $9.50

I was going to swear off all the wines from Amana, Iowa as possible on for the really sweet wine lover, when I opened this wine. I am trying to use all the Iowa wines that we bought because I am worried that they have a shorter shelf life than our other wines. Also, for summer I wanted to have mostly white and sparkling wines, however, we just bought a case of wine at Lynfred winery-which we never do, but the manager offered us 25% off and stated that the Old Vines Zinfandel that has 3% port in it to cut the tannins and is totally delicious and the late harvest Petite Syrah are low stock and will be gone shortly. Well, those are 2 of my favorite red wines, so know I have numerous red wines again and summer is here practically. I digress, back to the wine at hand, this wine tastes like liquid raspberry. It is absolutely delicious, as good as Lynfred's Raspberry wine which I have blogged on previously, however that only comes in the half bottle for $10.00 versus $9.50 for a large bottle. My better half finds this wine to be very good also, however, it is not nearly as sweet as the Blueberry wine. Unfortunately, since my better half has been sick lately, I will have to drink this by myself which I have no problem doing. I am sorry I don't have more posts on summer wines as we approach summer, but hopefully we will be finishing some of our reds and moving on to the whites and the sparklers for summer.

Day 85-Blueberry Wine by Sandstone Winery in Amana, Iowa for $9.95

I just lost my blog. I would not reccomend this wine it tastes like liquid sugar, however Troy thinks this blueberry wine is better that the blueberry wines at Cooperhawk and at Lynfred winery. I am thinking that these fruit wines are from last year and they are going bad, my dandelion tasted like vinegar after 1 day in the refridgerator and I actually think it was going bad before I actually opened the wine. This wine had no flavor to me, and I am thinking that this wine was from a concentrate versus real fruit. This town with its fruit wines is very cute and the wines are very reasonable and very sweet. I like the fruit wines from the Illinois wineries much better.

Day 84-Plum Wine of the Village Vintner in Amana, Illinois $9.95

This wine was bought at the same winery as the Dandelion wine. This wine is pure liquid sugar. This wine is so sweet that I was only able to choke down a small apertif. If you have ever had plum wine at a Japanese restaurant, this is the same type of wine, thick and very sweet. Of course, this wine was a huge hit with his family. I thought this wine was too sweet to drink, and I would only give it to people that I know liked sweet wine. I like the plum wine at Lynfred and Cooperhawk and neither of those wines taste nearly as sweet as this wine. The color on this wine was more of brandy versus the dark purple color of a plum. I will review Lynfred's plum wine at a different time and will compare it at that time.

Day 83-Sarah of the Kickapoo Winery for $13.50

This winery in Edwardsville, Ill was our first winery stop down on the way to Macomb, Ill. Sarah is grape wine infused with raspberry flavor. This wine gives money for breast cancer awareness and goes great with chocolate. This wine is more of a dessert wine, it is slightly thicker and has a strong raspberry flavor that you would almost call this wine a framboise. Most of the family thought this wine had too much bite to be a sweet wine, and I agreed this wine is best served in an apertif wine glass with a cheesecake, chocolate chip cookie, or with another type of dessert. Bring this to a party to pair with dessert.

Day 82-American Riesling-Ackerman Winery of Amana, Iowa $9.95

This winery was the second winery we visited in Amana, Iowa. They had numerous fruit wines and only a couple of wines made from grapes with the others being a shiraz and a merlot. This is a semi-sweet wine with a light yellow almost grapfruit colored with some lemon-lime flavor. Since I prefer a semi-sweet to a sweet wine this wine was liked by me more than anyone else. Again, this is another great summer and party wine for the non-connosiers of wine at a very reasonable price.

Day 81-Hometown White by the Willett's Winery and Cellar in Manito, Il for $12.50

This is a white table wine that is blend of the niagara grape and one other type of grape, I can't remember now. We stopped at this winery on our way down to Troy's parents house. The winery is doing well, and will be opening another shop in Peoria, Il. This wine was delicious, a great summer wine with a sweet grapey taste that was pure niagara-or the welch's white grape juice. The wine is light and sweet and was one of my favorite wines of the week in the country. The owner of the winery Dan was very friendly and told us that this wine was just bottled 3 days prior to us buying it. This wine showed no effects of bottle shock. This wine would be a great wine for a party especially if the people at the party are not wine drinkers or are sweet wine drinkers.

Day 80-Rhubarb-Village Vintner of Carpentersville, Il for $13.99

This wine is another fun wine that is both sweet and tart. If you like rhubarb, you will definitely like this wine. I have found myself liking all the rhubarb wines I have tried at Cooperhawk, Lynfred and the various wineries in Amana, Iowa. This is a very good relax on a summer day, sipping wine, the alcohol content is not extremely high and there is really nothing about this wine that is unpleasant. People who do not like sweet wines will not like this wine, but if you a breaking into wine or are trying the various fruit wines, this is a must try.

Day 79-Dandelion Wine the Village Vintner at $9.50 of Amana, Iowa

This wine was the second Dandelion wine I ever tasted, the first was in Pennslyvania. This winery was this first one we stopped at in Amana, Iowa when Troy and his parents, Tyler and the pup did a day trip to Amana, Iowa to taste wines. This wines in Amana are all fruit and vegetable wines and there are only a couple of wines that are actual grapes. This wine looks like lemonade and is tart and sweet and very pleasant for a summer day. The alcohol percentage is 11%-14%, however the wine is very light and really appears very simple. This wine is cheap enough to bringto parties and it was also sold by the gallon. Troy's parents also bought a bottle because we got 2 free glasses with the purchase of 5 bottles. This is just a fun wine that you have people try because it is made from a weed, the owner states that this wine needs to be made the day the dandelions are brought in because otherwise they turn brown and are no longer good. I like the wine, but I am not putting it up for any awards,

Day 78-Turn Me Sweet 2005-for $8 at Binnys

This wine was an impulsive by a Binnys due to the display and the price when we were at the Easter tasting. This wine is 100% Tempranillo sweet red wine with 11% alcohol and a product of Spain, La Mancha. The back of this label says "I saw her and my heart skipped a beat...How could a wine so innocent and sweet be so tempting? The moment it touches your lips, you will know. you've never had a sweet red like this before..." This wine is first sweet and then a bit of a dry aftertaste. I honestly feel that if this had some effervescence or some sparkling to it, it would be a Lambrusco. I love Lambrusco, and I really like this wine. You can't beat the price and most people would think it was fine, it is not a great wine, but a wine I could drink at a picnic, at a party, when I am broke, which is all the time. This wine again, like the other 2 in the tasting this week, is a fun wine to have whenever and wherever at a reasonable price to add to the evening. You may be wondering why I am drinking all these reds in May as the summer is coming on and the days are getting longer, and the answer is I need to finish these off this month so we can drink sparklings, whites, and fruits for the rest of the summer.

Day 77-Princess Red by the Village Vintner $14.99

This wine was also one of the wines we tasted this week in the group of 3 sweet red wines. We tried this wine for the first time at the Easter Party at the Village Vintner. We have been drinking a lot of Village Vintner wines lately because the wines were 20% off at the Easter party and then when we returned later that month we picked up two additional wines. The vintner describes this wine as a soft and versatile semi-sweet red wine. They find this wine to be heavy on the plum and cherry flavors which I would agree with. I believe this is good house wine for us, since it is not dry and has a lot of fruit flavors which make it drinkable now and very versatile. It is not so sweet that you think that you are having a dessert wine, and has very little aftertaste. This is an American Red Wine with a 12.5% alcohol content which gives it some kick, however overall this is a very pleasant wine that would go good at parties as well as dinner.

Day 76-Cheris h Noir by the Village Vintner Winery at $13.99

This wine was one of the three sweet red wine we tasted in the blind tasting this week while playing Winerd. This wine is very smooth and is basically a Pinot Noir infused with Black Cherry flavoring. This wine is sweet and tastes more like a fruit wine versus a Pinot Noir. The wine is rather light and could be drank year around chilled. I find this to be a great drinking wine and would not need to think about pairing it with food because I like it so much without food. This is a very reasonable price and I would think this would be a very good wine for a party versus an evening dinner, it is more of a fun wine versus a serious wine.

Day 75-Rhubarb by Lynfred Winery for $11 or under

This wine is the color of a watermelon Jolly Rancher and tastes like one too. This wine is made from 100% Crimson Rhubarb as all their fruits wine are at Lynfred. The wine is served very chilled and is tart and sweet. We finished off the bottle in one evening because the wine was sweet enough for my better half, but not with out the balance of the tartness which I really liked. We have tried the Rhubarb at Coopers Hawk Winery and at the Village Vintner and like all three. This wine is a tad thicker than your average wine with some legs. It is because I found this wine to be a tad heavier that I would not drink a lot of it at one time, but a couple of glasses seems to be a nice dessert and fun drinking wine. I would bring it to a summer party and it is cheap enough to bring a couple of bottles, people would just need to get over that it is rhubarb.

Day 74-Wine-a-Rita by the Village Vintner for $13.99

This wine tastes like a combination of wine and margarita. It is a great wine for the celebration of the cinco de mayo and was on the tasting list of the village vintner for the month of May.

Day 73-Mary Michelle Vidal Blanc 2005 Greene County Ice Wine Sweet Dessert Wine for $17 at Binnys

This was the worst of the 3 Ice Wine/Dessert wines that we tried this week. I must add that all these bottles are half bottles at 375ml and it is still going to take Troy a long time to drink this wine. This wine is actually made by an Illinois Winery and is aged in french oak barrels for 8 months. This Ice Wine is one of the darkest yellows I have ever seen for a Vidal Blanc and it almost tastes port style. We bought because it was under $20 and in this case we got what we paid for. This wine is not sweet at all and takes like no Ice Wine I have ever tried. This wine is going to be a slow boat to China, but we are going to try to finish it before it crystalizes.

Day 72-Vin de GLaciere Pacific Rim 2006 Washington Riesling for $17.00 at Binnys

This wine was talked about in one of my many wine books a cheaper version of Ice Wine. This wine doesn't actually take frozen grapes off the vine, but freezes the grapes and then make the dessert wine. This wine is described as a Dessert Style Wine made from post harvest Riesling grapes. The wine is 9% alcohol and 16.2% residual sugar. This wine was in our dessert wine/Ice wine tasting this week which was held on Monday versus Friday this week because I was simply too hung over from doing the Toast of the Town on Thursday night for her birthday. This was my favorite of the 3 wines we tasted. It is not overly syrupy and is still sweet. I prefer Riesling to Vidal Blanc which also might account for preference of this wine, but my better half liked this wine a lot also. If you like sweet wines, you will really like this wine, and tastes like peaches and apricots and generally in small doses excellent.