Day 30-La Spinetta 2007 Bricco Quaglia Moscato D'Asti for $16.99 at Vintages in Arlington Heights

I bought this wine for my better half at Vintages as a peace offering since I went to the Champagne/Sparkling wine tasting with my sister while he worked. This was one of the two sweet sparkling wines at the tasting, and is this wine ever sweet. This wine has peach overtones and is one the more sweeter moscato d'asti's that I have tried. The wine is a golden color and has a good fizz to it. I would replace dessert with this wine because of the amount of sweetness. My better half will drink the majority of this wine since I find it to be so sweet it hurts my teeth. Again, this wine is very low in alcohol at 5.5% and is a great wine chilled for the summer. To many, this tastes like sparkling juice, however the moscato d'asti's are rarely bad and tend to be liked a lot by the non-wine drinkers.

Day 29-Village Vintner Pink Catawba for $13.00

This wine was wine of the month for the sweet wines club for January 2009. The Village Vintner which is located in Carpentersville, Il has some of the most unique sweet wines. The vintner describes this wine as a sweet and fruity rose wine made from a native american late ripening grape. It's reminiscent of raspberries and peaches embodied with candied fruit. The vintner believes the wine pairs well with light fish dishes, cheese and crackers, or just sip and relax. The best comparison of a wine made out of Catawba is a white zinfandel. I find the Catawba wine to be sweeter than the white zinfandel. This wine is very good with a tart finish. I am over half through the bottle as we speak, and I am very happy with the purchase. I think this is a very good drinking wine with out food with more fruit flavors of raspberries and strawberries. I have tried numerous wines made out of catawba and blends with the catawba grape and generally they are on the sweeter side and fruity. This is a grape that is grown native to the United States and we have tried it made it in ohio and in illinois and this wine is a great indication of how good a catawba wine can taste.

Day 28-Stella Rosa by 1917 Il Conte D'Alba for $15.99 at Winestyles

I am sorry the blogging took a break for a couple days, but after wine tasting for 4 days straight I needed to detox for a couple of days. And to start back with a Stella Rosa from the Piemonte region of Italy, is a slow start back in the realm of wine tasting. This wine reminds me a lot of the Rosa Regale, a sweet red bubbly that has great fruit and sweetness while still being very light and delicious. The vintner describes the wine as "From the beautiful village of Santo Stefano Belbo in Peimonte comes our delicious Stella Rosa. A refreshing red wine to be served chilled an accompanied by fresh fruit and cheese. I was actually eating shrimp cocktail while drinking this wine and the shrimp sauce is too overpowering for this wine. This is a great wine for romance, very low alcohol content, 5.5%, so you could have a bottle at dinner and still be able to drive home, or if you are looking for an easy crowd pleaser. I really like this wine and have seen wine bars promote this wine a lot for the novice wine taster orto someone who says they don't like wine. The wine has no negative attributes and if a tad cheaper would be a staple in my home.

Day 27-Debonne Vineyards Razzberry Riesling for $9.99

The Debonne Winery in Cleveland had a lot of medium sweet, sweet, and ice wines and a port to taste. We bought an ice wine and a this bottle. This wine is a grape wine with natural raspberry flavor added and described as having a delicate raspberry aroma followed by fruity, lightly sweet raspberry and riesling flavors and a refreshing aftertaste. The winery suggests the wine be served slightly chilled with fruit custard type desserts and cheesecake. The label is very cool with a guitare on the front and a map on the back. The artwork is by cleveland artist Hector Vega. This wine was also sipped from the hottub and was good. It is medium sweet with a little aftertaste, you can tell it is not pure rasberry. It is a little more berry than your typical white zinfandel, but I would place it in the same category.

Day 18-Buccia Reflections of Lake Erie for $10

We are going back to Day 18 since I obviously missed a day and want to make sure we have all the days accounted for even if they are not in order. The story behind the name of this wine, is that the wine growers of the lake erie area of ohio are trying to find a blend of ohio grapes that typify the region. This is Buccia vineyards wine that reflects the grapes of the Lake Erie regions and I guess about 5 other vineyards are also trying to make a blend that typifies the grapes of ther region. It was a medium sweet white table wine at 11% alcohol that would be a good drinking wine as well as wine with food. The best part of this winery was that the owner of the winery set up the bottles in front of us, said take your time and pour yourself and socialized with us for about an hour and half. Buccia Vinyards was by far the most enjoyable tasting experience of the trip. The winery had about 6-8 sweet wines and we came home with 3 of them. Buccia also has a bed and breakfast and if we ever have the time to go back to the area we will stay at their bed and breafast.

Day 26- Red Velvet by Virant Family Winery near Lake Erie for $8.00

My better half and I got engaged on 2/21/09 and celebrated our engagement by going to Geneva on the Lake about 45 miles outside of Cleveland where there are about 22 wineries within 40 miles. The Virant Family Winery, which is run by Charlie, was one of our stops on our wine trip. Charlie was actually bottling when we got there and we needed to stomp on the floor for him to do the wine tasting. The Red Velvet is there most award winning wine and it is a concord blend. Charlie was very secretive about his wines and wouldn't tell us which grapes made up the blend, but maybe I just don't realize how cutthroat it is in the winery business. The wine is described as a medium sweet red wine that has a vineyard fresh aroma and grape flavor with a smooth finish. We drank the bottle of this while relaxing in the hot tub at the hotel. It is very grapey like a concord typically is and smooth without that overboard sweetness. All the wines at this winery were reasonably priced with none of the sweet to med sweet wines being over $15.00. His blackberry wine was sold out he let us try it, and if ohio was able to ship to illinois I would order that wine on line and have it shipped.

Day 25 -August Hill's Augie's Blackberry at $16.95 for a 375ml/ half bottle

This wine came as part of the two wines that came in the sweet wines of the month club for January 2009. This is described as a port style dessert wine. This wine is pure blackberry. It is a fruit wine and it is tart. It makes your mouth water and the half bottle is plenty for me. I prefer this wine with chocolate to cut some of the tartness. If you like blackberries, you may like this wine, however it is in a port style and is 18% alcohol so it has some kick. I am drinking the wine with a chocolate in my mouth to cut some of the tartness. I think you could add a spritzer, such as seltzer, to cut some of the tartness and overwhelming fruitiness. The wine is a dark purple and stains the glass a pink color, I don't know how that relates to wine, but I do find that most red wines do not do this, so it is just an fyi. This wine is best served in small doses with chocolate for dessert, I definitely could not drink more than a glass of this wine without having my entire mouth turning purple and be in the permanent pucker face. Each with chocolate and this wine in small doses makes a nice closing to a romantic evening.