Like many people, I love a nice glass of wine and particularly on a Friday evening, I often have a glass or two to help unwind at the end of a busy week. Having spent some time in France and visited a few ‘vignobles’ I have always been interested in the different types of wine and the processes involved in making them, but I have never really had the time to do anything other than drink it.
That is where the exciting new wine subscription service; the Wine List comes in. Imagine having two different wines arriving each month for you to not only try but also to learn about? It is such a genius idea.
I agreed to receive one of their monthly boxes. Each month you pay £39 and each monthly box contains:
– Two incredible bottles (these are priced at about £15-20 retail): we value lesser known regions, grapes, and winemakers
– Wine Roots: our wine course programme: 12 lessons explaining key concepts from tasting through to winemaking
– Interactive tasting cards designed to help you with finding wine aromas
– Access to the Wine List community: loads of supermarket tasting notes, monthly tasting videos with me, and (soon) a digital community of other wine drinkers.
The first thing I noticed when my Wine List parcel arrived was how well packaged the wine is, which is really important. Inside I found my two bottles of wine, one white and one red. The red wine was a bottle of Cara Sucia Tinto de Rivadavia, an Argentinian red. The bottle of white wine was Massaya Blanc from Lebanon. Both wines were completely new to me and I was excited to give them a try.
Along with the wine, you receive lots of information about the two bottles of wine and two tasting cards. These are not your average wines, they are interesting wines that will not only taste good, but will also help you with your quest to learn more about wine. The taste cards help you to understand how to describe the wine by giving you a selection of words to choose from to help you identify the aroma and the taste. There is also space at the bottom of each card for you to make your own notes. It makes the process of drinking really interesting and having done this with these two bottles, it makes me want to try it more with some of my other favourite bottles of wine.
Of course, you also have access to the Wine Roots online course which teaches you month by month the basic principles of wine producing and tasting and by the end of the year, you should be able to understand how wines should taste and what influences and impacts that taste. It is really fascinating to see how the different types of grapes, the weather, where it is grown and other factors affect the final taste.
So what did I think of the wine? Amazing. I am already a fan of Argentinian wines but the Cara Sucia was delicious. Due to the light-skinned cereza grape that is used to make it, the wine is light in colour and body and would probably be nice chilled. It had a sharpness but also a hint of red fruit which made it a perfect summer wine which would be lovely with lighter dishes. The Massaya Blanc was my favourite of the two, I do tend to favour white wine and this is a wine I would buy again. This is a medium-to-full bodied wine with aromas of jasmine, lemon and honey. It has a medium acidity and again is a perfect summer wine.
The Wine List really is a great idea, whether a treat for yourself or a gift for a friend. It is really interesting to learn more about the wines we are drinking but I love the fact that it allows you to try wines that you might not otherwise have tried.
Disclaimer – I was sent a one month subscription to the Wine List free of charge in return for this post. All opinions are my own.
