Shoo Fly, Chardonnay, 2009
€13.95, Mill Wine Cellar
Chardonnay as it should be, beauitful soft and full bodied, with a strong body of melon and elderberries both on the nose and on the plate. The wine opens with peach and minerality showing and developing, grapefruit makes an apperance on the palate. Not the most complicated wine but extremely tasty, offering a lot of taste and a good interesting cool-climate chardonnay from the adelaide hills a region fast stealing my heart. Advice would be to find a bit of spare change and add it to the ten quid bottle you normally get and try this wine. Tis an award winner after all having the title of best white wine on the Irish Market under €20, not a bad reputation to have mind you.
Petit Fumé, Michel Redde et Fils, 2010
€16.99, Mill Wine Cellar
We have sun, we need a crisp clean cut white to celebrate, look no further than Petit Fumé, made by Michel Redde et Fils, this Sauvignon Blanc is what you need, Sauvignon Blanc has risen to popularity of late- especially with the rise of New Zealand wine. While New Zealand is now regarded as the King of Sauvignon Blanc, I feel that this title is fairly undermining of the French examples, we have loire producing some of the most crisp examples of this vartiel, so looking at this pacticular bottle, we have a crisp and clean experience. Brilliantly structured, fresh apple and minerality notes, finishing with acidity to clear the palate after each mouthful. The nose is especially inviting on this, best when just slightly chilled to take the acid edge off. While slightly expensive, this bottle and grape has finally come into it's own, rarely failing to impress. What we're talking about here is a sleek stylish examof what is now just a bulk grape; it has distinct fruit notes and subtle hints to leave you curious. Its greatest drawback (being students) is the price. However remember it is on offer, so it’s well worth picking up as a treat, and in this weather the wine will be one of the most refreshing things on the shelf
Santa Digna, Cab Sauv Res, 2010
€9.99, Wine Mill Cellar
Sun seems as though it would like to stay and as a ritual in it's honour (and as a hopefully attempt to persuade it to stay for a short while longer) I thought I ought to toast to it this weekend. Now we have offered you our white wine selection, but despite two of my bigger predujices, the first that chilean wine will dissappoint and the second that Rosés are a stupid idea and are boring wines of my own I decided I'd give the following wine a bit of a test drive. So the wine up for tasting? Cabernet Sauvignon Rosé, 2010, from Santa digna, chile. So starting out with low expectations, opening the bottle, I was suprised to be greeted by a more than pleasant raspberry and subtle strawberry nose, beckoned by this I knocked a bit into a glass give it a bit of a swirl and slurped me some Rosé, and for the second time in not so long chile has surprised myself. So with this we were looking at raspberry, strawberry, bit of early minerality of a very flithish style. As the wine opened up we started to see the fruits develop a little, we started to get grapefruit and the nose turned slightly Sauv Blanc with gooseberry. What was the biggest slap in the face was how refreshing the wine tasting despite the fact it weighed it at a burly 13.5% alcohol. That fact showed the quality of the make of the wine we were dealing with, that combined with the full body of the wine. I'd have given it a 7, fresh wine, felt a little green at points but nothing overly officious to the palate!
Max Fred. Richter, Mosel Valley Riesling, 2009
€14.99, Corkscrew
A lovely example of Mosel Valley Riesling. Crisp and refreshing as all Riesling should be, it is sweet with a Clean nose, the wine is extremely complicated with melons, pear, apple and a slight hint of citrus making up the main fruits of the wine there is a nice touch of clove to the wine and everything seems to have a thin blanket of honey coating it. To boot it even has a foral smell as it opens which does not get lose on the palate, despite the mass arrays of smells and tastes each one is well defined. Leaving for a truly enjoyable wine that seems to wreak of a come hither note.
Leyda Reserve, Pinot Noir 2009
€14.95, Mill Wine Cellar
New world wine is a bit of a new thing for myself only letting go of my predjuices against many regions. However one predjuice has managed to last the test of time Chilean wine. That is until recently, so recent in fact it was this week, when I found a bottle of Pinot hiding behind large quanities of Shiraz from the same nation. Single vineyard always a good sign. Opening the bottle I was greeted by a warm smelling wine, nice mind you, slowly this developed into a nice red fruit and tobacco form, living up to the warm cilmate Pinot reputation of packing a punch, not only that but this also as it opened smelt meaty, and on the palte started to minic this and also add a sweet red pepper undertone. It kept opening up as the night progress and showed signs of the red berries and other red fuits as well as the prevelant tobacco smell and palate, all in all? A wine well enjoyed.
If you, like I, have ever watched Shaun of the Dead, it should be needless to say that you will have grasped the rather central thematic concept that a Zombie is someone or something that should by all rights be dead at this point, but is apparently not. Now to another harsh feature of these Zombie types, they come in an endless wave, persistent and never ending. To make sense of this, were I looking for a metaphor to offer the to Riesling here, well, I would most definitely compare it to a Zombie.
The first day of holidays in Portugal I decided it best to tip down to the shops for some essentials for the apartment. While perusing the shelves of a local shop (under the pretence of going to the shop for some coffee and milk), not even a wine shop I was not expecting much. However, all was not as it would seem. Normally I am used to going into a supermarket and seeing overpriced banal branded wines staring back at me, today this was not the case. 
So with these occupation things being all the rage and us
empty heads sharing an ironically leftie view of the world we said we would
dedicate this review to the exec of Maynooth’s Student Union who at the time of
writing are bailed up in a TD’s office in Naas. The wine would need the values of #Occupy at heart so what wine ticks all these boxes?
I managed to follow this wine over three consecutive nights by accident. My busy schedule and a missing vacuum seal had left me relying on my trusty robot bottle stopper. So what were the consequences of this? Well the wine itself was left exposed to the elements, the main one being Oxygen.
When people say terroir in reference to a wine, one might think of the French telling you why their wines are unique and more importantly the most expensive wines in the world. Now, while France does produce some excellent wines the price unfortunately stops most of us mere mortals from every affording them.
