Makes You Go Huh....

My PIC never works on his birthday, it's apparently a life-long tradition. It's not one that I can explain, but it does give us an extra day together. So, you will not be surprised when I tell you that we made a winery visit. We trekked out to Elverson, PA to check out J. Maki. It's a lovely drive to get there from Ludwig's Corner, it actually reminded me of the Virginia wine country.

We bellied up to the bar as I worked hard to suppress the overwhelming feeling that we were intruding on them - interrupting their daily routine. It was an interesting tasting; we had the "pleasure" of the winemaker's company and a private tasting - by virtue of the fact that we were the only ones there. He's a man of few words, offering no insight on the individual wines with the exception of one or two, and that was only one sentence. There were seven offerings but he did pour us a few wines not on the tasting menu. 

There is a $20 tasting fee which is waived if you make a purchase. I understand tasting fees - I hate them - but I understand them. But here's my real issue with this one - at least pour enough in the glass that I can smell and taste it! The pour was so minimal, it wasn't enough to even swirl in the glass, let alone in my mouth. Tasting fee or not, if you want to create a possibility, no matter now remote, that I'm going to buy, please don't tell me about how many awards you've won; how popular your wine is; where you sell it; how many people from New York buy it; how much you ship to the west coast of Florida...just pour enough in my glass so that I can actually taste it.

I honestly think they sell their wine by creating an awkward and uncomfortable tasting room situation.  Having said all of that,  to recoup our tasting fee, we gambled and brought some home but, I gotta tell ya... that's no excuse for being sucked in! 

The VSP is a Bordeaux blend that we thought we liked when we tasted the tablespoon-full at the winery. We opened one the other night and we weren't exactly doing cartwheels over it. It was pretty tight at first, no fruit on the nose, only oak, lots of oak.  We recorked it and put it in the refrigerator thinking it would be cooking wine.  I couldn't help but try it again and tonight's encounter was not much better.  Instead of cooking wine it became drain cleaner.

Fortunately, the whole birthday wasn't a bust.  We did get a couple of dessert wines that that were really nice!