The most unusual bottle of wine I ever had

Cafe Society
1

I’m sure this thread has been done repeatedly, but I haven’t seen it myself, so…

Some years ago I was visiting my friend and happened to be looking at his wine rack. At the time, my friend was not a wine drinker, and this 12-rack contained a motley aggregation of random wines that he had accumulated in one fashion or another over the years. The rack was sitting on the top of his refrigerator, where it had been for as long as I could remember. According to him, prior to that it had been stored in the attic at some point.

“This is ridiculous,” I said. 'We have to open at least one of those bottles tonight, if only for the sake of science."

We chose a blush. It had turned a sort of yellowish beige color. It was with some apprehension that I applied the corkscrew.

And it was delicious! It tasted like a real French Sauternes. And we didn’t get sick or see any pink elephants.

2

My Grandmother could make wine out of anything. I’m guessing nettles would qualify as the “most unusual.” You could also pick from dandelions, gooseberries and watermelon rind. . . and those are just the weirdest ones.

3

Garlic wine from James May’s Second Big Wine Adventure. Fast forward to 3min 20 seconds. I’ve never actually tried it and I don’t thing I want to.

4

Caterpillar wine.
http://www.walterreeves.com/insects_animals/article.phtml?cat=21&id=469

5

My favorite winery, of which I’m a club member, frequently ships a bottle of Rouge de Noirs as part of their shipment. It’s a Pinot grape sparkling wine. Definitely takes some getting used to at first, but once you do it’s fantastic. I’ve never heard of nor seen this from another winery.

6

I just bought my friend Hot Sun wine from the Key West Winery, which is jalapeno and tomato flavored. I brought back a bottle last time I was there and he’s been raving about it since last February.

7

The strangest wine I ever had was made from cucumbers. The oddest thing about it is that it was actually enjoyable to drink.

8

My friend Steve made a barleywine with smoked cicadas, which didn’t have much of a cicada taste, actually.

As far as wine goes, I had a parsnip wine at the Coalbrookdale Inn that tasted nondescriptly sweet, but had an amazing parsnip aroma.

9

Korbel, up in Guerneville, CA, makes some offbeat sparklers now and then. At the moment, it looks like they have a pinot noir / cabernet blend champagne as a semi-regular item. The last time I visited the winery, they also had some limited quantity varietals such as merlot and syrah. I got the impression that the vintner was bored one day and tried them for giggles - IIRC, they’d only produced 100 cases (1200 bottles) of the merlot.

10

Similarly, Australia is known for sparkling shiraz. I bought one for NYE a few years ago along with a few other sparklers. It was the only one that had at least half a bottle left to dump. I’ve tried Korbel’s sparkling red wines, and I’m not a fan of those either. I think it is definitely an acquired taste, but it’s not one that I’ve acquired yet.

11

I had a sparkling merlot at a restaurant a few years back that was just fantastic. Ordered it because it sounded interesting and ended up drinking the whole bottle. Unfortunately, I was way too drunk to remember who made it.

12

Yeah… I certainly appreciated that they were pouring tastings of it when I was there, but my first impressions were that it was a mistake. :stuck_out_tongue:

I do like their chardonnay champagne, though.

13

There are lots of Champagnes out there made purely from Pinot Noir.

Those orange wines, now some of those are weird.

14

Not all that unusual, but the most unusual I’ve ever had (hey, I’ve lived a very sheltered life!) is Eiswein, or ice wine. It’s a very sweet white wine where the grapes are harvested and pressed while they’re frozen. As a result, you end up with a wine that tastes like it was made from grape juice concentrate.

It’s actually quite tasty, but not the kind of wine you’d want a whole wine glass full of. We have used it, for about five years now, as the dessert wine with the after-dinner pie at Christmas. We serve it in tiny liqueur glasses. It’s not something you’d want more than a couple of ounces of at any given time.

15

A quick google seems to indicate that Garlic Wine is a base ingredient for cooking with, not for drinking on its own.

16

Well yes, but they seemed to indicate it was “essence of blackwater.” Who would want to add that to their dish?

17

Which of course does nothing but bring up the question of the value of cooking with a wine you wouldn’t drink.

I should be fair and try it when used by a cook who knows what they’re doing but honestly, I can’t see anything good pouring from that bottle.

18

I’ve had a lot of homemade wine in Bulgaria. Some of it was quite…unique.

I don’t know if there’s a law against it or what, but it seems kind of strange to me that I’ve never heard of anyone making homemade wine in the US. And I grew up in Sonoma County.

19

I’ll just grab you a bottle of Worcestershire sauce to gulp down.

20

Funny you mention Aussie sparkling Shiraz. I bought a couple bottles of the Mollydooker version a few years ago, thinking “Mollydooker, it’s gotta be at least drinkable.” It was about $40 a bottle, so it wasn’t cheap, either.

The first bottle we opened over Christmas, with lots of people around, mostly non-wine-drinkers. It was universally hated, and we ended up pouring it out.

Saved the second bottle for a couple years, then brought it to a wine-drinker get-together. Once again, we ended up pouring it out.

Not often I find a wine that neither the winos nor the non-winos like. It’s either just bad, or an acquired taste that I, like you, don’t have.