The Wine Cellar --
A Review of Regular Guys Wines
Chateau Thames Embankment 1996
This Claret was inspired by fictional barrister Horace Rumpole. He was fond of a particular vintage, "served to the less prosperous members of the legal profession at Pomeroy's Wine Bar, Fleet Street, London." Actually this Claret, made from Merlot juice we purchased from California, turned out to be quite extraordinary. A rich complex flavor with brilliant red color led the judges at the Amateur Wine Guild Festival to award this wine first prize among the dry red vineferas.
Esperanza Red Zinfandel 1996
The name means "spirit" in spanish. This wine really is spirited. It is zesty and goes really well with pasta.
Sister's Choice Alicante' 1996
This is Barb's favorite wine. Deep, deep red in color and naturally sweet. We get the juice from the Regina Vineyards in Madera, California. Made from the Alicante Bouschet grape, this wine is not well known. It is often used in blending to give other wines more color and sweetness. But we think it makes a great dessert wine. So did the judges at the Wine Guild Festival. They rated it second in the Aperitif catagory.
Darby Valley Peach 1996
Tragedy strikes! We found some great peaches at a nearby orchard and thought this would be a great wine to try. When bottling time came we decided that we should sweeten the wine to bring out the peach flavor. It was wonderful...some of the best non-grape wine we had made. Unfortunately, we did not put in enough stabilizer to prevent the sugar we added to the wine from fermenting after we corked the bottles. It's a good thing we enjoyed some of the wine while we were bottling it. We lost the rest as one by one the bottles began blowing their corks and spraying wine over the next couple of weeks. Lesson learned. We'll try again.
Darby Valley Cape Cod Cranberry 1996
A real improvement over our 1994 effort. Extra racking meant less sediment in the bottle. The wine is pale pink fruity and tart. It's a real holiday treat.
Sunny Days Orange Wine 1996
So, someone says, "You know, you can even make wine from frozen concentrated orange juice." Well, we had to try that! It makes a really nice wine. One piece of advice. If you try to make it, use a BIG fermentation tank...at least double the volume of the wine you are making. We've never seen anything ferment so violently. In fact, it blew the lid right off our fermenter! Being Regular Guys, we dealt with that by taping down the lid with duct tape. That night the pressure built up until it blew the air lock right out of the lid and we had an orange geyser that actually hit the ceiling. But the resulting wine is really interesting. It does not really taste orange. There is just a hint of citrus flavor. Some people think it tastes a little like a Chardonnay and it has about the same color. We took a 4th place with it in the white non-grape catagory.
