>City Wine Shop is a lovely new addition to Melbourne’s wine world. Right next door to the famous European restaurant, it is a small but friendly place to buy wine by the bottle, partake in tastings and classes, or simply enjoy a great wine platter with a glass or two of an evening after work.

Noela, Mena and I took our wine blogging work seriously. We’d researched where we could be sure of getting more than one sparkling wine by the glass, so that we could try more than one on the night without breaking the bank. On a warm summer’s evening we convened seriously at a sidewalk table, and our waitress Theresa helped us choose.

Our first choice was a Yering Station Yarrabank 2001, the most expensive on the list at $11 a glass. Australia is well known for its excellent quality sparkling wines (although to be honest we seem to keep the good stuff for consumption on these shores). We were hoping for a Party Sparkler or even a Special Sparkler from this one.

How disappointed we were. After the first sip we looked quizzically at each other. It actually didn’t taste of anything much. Our notes of the evening stated: “Neither dry nor sweet. Bitter after-taste. Bland.”

Theresa could see we were disappointed, and offered us our choice of any of the sparkling wines being poured by the European as well as the City Wine Shop’s selection. We chose a Pol Clement Brut, a French “vin mousseux” but not from the Champagne region. It was $8 a glass and I was expecting a Dud or perhaps a Party Sparkler if we were lucky.

Sensational! This wine had a fresh floral aroma and a crisp taste. The bubbles persisted for as long as it took to drain the glass. So we did. Then we ordered another, and then we threw caution to the wind and ordered a bottle: At $16 a pop (plus corkage), who wouldn’t?

We sat for the whole evening watching the world go by, the Pol Clement flowing along with the conversation.

Every twenty minutes or so the Indian tram they commissioned for the Commonwealth Games floated past, lights ablaze. The lights of the Parliament building opposite made a fitting backdrop in the summer night.

Count us in for the next WBW!

>Brenda at Culinary Fool is the host for the December WBW. And what a topic it is!

Festive Sparkling Wines must be the very best topic for a pre-Christmas excuse for a drinking – sorry, tasting – session.

Who’s with me?

If you’re in Melbourne let me know if you are up for a Sparkling Night Out, and if you are elsewhere in the world why not stock up on an interesting bottle of bubbly or two amongst mates, taste and test and send in your report!

>I was on vacation for the first opportunity to get involved with this, so my sister Mena obliged.

As I prefer white wine and as there was no chance of even sampling something nice from Long Island (I’m in Australia), I decided to go with an Italian white.

There were a total of TWO Italian wines at my local bottle shop !! That is to say that they actually came from Italy – we’re very lax in our descriptions over here and there were quite a number of “Italian” wines. They were both around the same price – the same price I paid for a box of six bottles of locally grown cleanskin chardonnay by the way – and didn’t seem noticeably different, so I picked the one in the prettiest bottle.

The wine I selected was :
CANEI
Vino Prizzante
Mellow White Wine
8.5% Alc./Vol.

The description on the bottle said : “The semi sweet white wine generously rich and full with a delightful clean aftertaste : the ideal companion for good food and every happy occasion”.

By the time Wednesday came around I was looking forward to enjoying my nicely chilled bottle of choice with some Garlic Chilli Prawns and a Greek salad.

Boy was I disappointed !!! First thing I noticed was how light the colour was (think water) and that it seemed to be slightly effervescent. “Okaaay – refreshing” I thought and took an initial swig. Let me describe the taste like this …… you know the really cheap sickly sweet Asti Spumante that you swigged by the neck in secret before High School dances (or was that just me) ? … think sweeter, sicklier !! Think molasses mixed with water in a bottle !!

I had to leave it alone that night … it was ruining the taste of my prawns … but I tried it again the next day with the same result. Then not wanting to give up, I left it to try again as an afternoon drink with lunch on Saturday, which somehow didn’t seem so bad.

I can’t say what else it tasted of because the treacle/molasses/sugar taste overrode every other taste.

If this wine were a tree it would be a sugar plum.

As far as I am concerned this wine would only be nice if used as an addition to trifle.