The Case for Weird Wines

In light of my last, fairly abysmal blog posting, I am going to start with an actual topic for my first post of February. That, in itself, is kind of ridiculous for a person who insisted that she was going to blog "more than once per week". Silly me....life had other plans. Oh, well, and anyway, I intend to wax poetic about wine this afternoon. As per my introductory post on this blog, I j'adore just about any wine: red, white, blush, what have you, with a few notable exceptions. I do not like sweet wines, unless they are specifically dessert wines, served with....you guessed it....dessert. I abhor White Zinfandels and I have even come to dislike quite a number of German Reislings. Call me a snob for having those caveats to my "flavor profile", but sweet and wine are two words that I definitely do not want describing a wine glass set in front of me. Don't get me started on the propensity of Texans to sweeten their reds (insert exaggerated shudder here).

So, a couple of weeks ago, my husband made his usual pilgrimage to his favorite liquor store (really a liquor warehouse with A LOT of lovely specialty foods and a pretty darn good deli thrown in for good measure). He brought home a wine from a region of the world that I never, not in a million years, would have guessed would have produced wine of any quality whatsoever. This wine, white by color, hailed from "the microzone of the Tsinandali in the Kakheti region" of The Republic of Georgia. Anybody really know where that is? Obviously, it is in the former Soviet Union and, according to an extensive Wikipedia article, this region is considered to be one of the oldest wine producing regions of Europe. Its viticulture history goes back over 7000 years. Who the heck knew?

The wine itself was made from Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane which are apparently two of the most important grapes in Georgian wine production. The wine bottle indicated that the wine is matured in oak barrels for three years, which, knowing absolutely nothing about this region, I can not say whether that is typical or not. Regardless, the wine was a pale lemon color which appeared kind of oddly effervescent when we poured it into the glasses. The nose was very nearly indescribable with a fairly floral component and perhaps something akin to lemon zest. The flavor profile was equally strange - or perhaps I should say "unique" because I am honestly completely unfamiliar with the grapes. At first sip, it seemed almost sugary, but almost immediately translated to a round, full flavor with very sharp acidity. The floral notes translated to the flavor as well and made me think of the rosewater ingredient found in Middle Eastern desserts. My husband described his first taste as an "industrial accident", but, over the course of two full glasses whose temperature came up as we drank it, found the flavor to grow on him exponentially. The flavor grew on me as well, but I found the acidity to become significantly more pronounced as I continued to drink. It seemed like a chardonnay in mouthfeel and somewhat in flavor, but to compare this to a standard chardonnay, especially from France, would be a woeful misrepresentation.

In any case, as this post is titled, "The Case for Weird Wines", I should say that I would, with only a minute amount of hesitation, recommend this wine to anyone out there. It was completely different from anything that I have ever tried and, besides the adventurous drinking component, I did actually learn something about this region of the wine world. Again, who knew The Republic of Georgia was the cradle of European viticulture? I am intrigued and it may just be me that brings something home next time that would certainly fit the description of a "weird wine".