Tasting Troublemaker
My boyfriend and I took a trip to Cellar Wine and Spirits this week because I told him I was behind on trying wine for my blog posts. He did not complain.
For starters, this wine is called Troublemaker. It is a red blend from Paso Robles, California and it is made up of syrah, grenache, petite syrah, mourvedre, and zinfandel. It was $13.99. For the life of me I could not figure out the year because it wasn't on the bottle and I tried Googling it and still couldn't find it. :(
We'd planned on ordering pizza from Pizza Shuttle that night, and our regular order is barbecue chicken pizza, and I decided we'd try pairing a wine with it. From my notes, I knew two different groups of wines went with pizza, BUT one of those groups ALSO went with bbq, so I figured that would be the best way to go. So we decided to try and seek out bordeaux, merlot, GSM, or zinfandel. Obviously we were lost, and I wanted to try out asking for help, so we asked the man at the front desk what he thought might pair well with bbq chicken pizza. He definitely leaned towards reds like we expected, and brought up zinfandel and bordeaux, but he also recommended we get a blend. He specifically suggested the Troublemaker wine because it was easy for wine beginners and would most likely work for what we were wanting. He really likes blends :) He said he thought it might pair well with the barbecue part more than the pizza part but that it should have a relatively complex set of flavors to match it.
So we grabbed the bottle and took it home.
I took a regular sip without the pizza first and my first thought was SPICY. It was very sharp and made my mouth feel spicy but then settled down to be kinda dry. I'm not very good at sorting out flavors in wines yet, so bitter is my second description. After really trying to figure out the flavors, I could get hints of fruits like blackberry/raspberry, but nothing too sour or sweet. It was definitely dry and tannic, and I could taste the alcohol really easily. The alcohol usually overtakes any other flavors in wines I try. I will say I agree with the label in that is was fairly smooth. It wasn't sharp, more hot like spices and alcohol. After initially trying it, I tasted it with pizza. That was not a good choice. The pizza somehow tasted better to me, it was yummy and sweet from the barbecue and savory from the chicken and cheese (or maybe I just REALLY like the pizza). The wine tasted AWFUL after taking bites of pizza. It hit my mouth with a bunch of bitterness and dryness like a truck and I couldn't taste much of anything. This tells me that it either the wine was too complex for cheap pizza from a joint or else I'm bad at tasting, but I still had a delicious dinner and attempted to get tipsy.
Sorry to say that I did NOT like this wine, and the tastes I could parse out were from multiple strained sips.
For starters, this wine is called Troublemaker. It is a red blend from Paso Robles, California and it is made up of syrah, grenache, petite syrah, mourvedre, and zinfandel. It was $13.99. For the life of me I could not figure out the year because it wasn't on the bottle and I tried Googling it and still couldn't find it. :(
We'd planned on ordering pizza from Pizza Shuttle that night, and our regular order is barbecue chicken pizza, and I decided we'd try pairing a wine with it. From my notes, I knew two different groups of wines went with pizza, BUT one of those groups ALSO went with bbq, so I figured that would be the best way to go. So we decided to try and seek out bordeaux, merlot, GSM, or zinfandel. Obviously we were lost, and I wanted to try out asking for help, so we asked the man at the front desk what he thought might pair well with bbq chicken pizza. He definitely leaned towards reds like we expected, and brought up zinfandel and bordeaux, but he also recommended we get a blend. He specifically suggested the Troublemaker wine because it was easy for wine beginners and would most likely work for what we were wanting. He really likes blends :) He said he thought it might pair well with the barbecue part more than the pizza part but that it should have a relatively complex set of flavors to match it.
So we grabbed the bottle and took it home.
I took a regular sip without the pizza first and my first thought was SPICY. It was very sharp and made my mouth feel spicy but then settled down to be kinda dry. I'm not very good at sorting out flavors in wines yet, so bitter is my second description. After really trying to figure out the flavors, I could get hints of fruits like blackberry/raspberry, but nothing too sour or sweet. It was definitely dry and tannic, and I could taste the alcohol really easily. The alcohol usually overtakes any other flavors in wines I try. I will say I agree with the label in that is was fairly smooth. It wasn't sharp, more hot like spices and alcohol. After initially trying it, I tasted it with pizza. That was not a good choice. The pizza somehow tasted better to me, it was yummy and sweet from the barbecue and savory from the chicken and cheese (or maybe I just REALLY like the pizza). The wine tasted AWFUL after taking bites of pizza. It hit my mouth with a bunch of bitterness and dryness like a truck and I couldn't taste much of anything. This tells me that it either the wine was too complex for cheap pizza from a joint or else I'm bad at tasting, but I still had a delicious dinner and attempted to get tipsy.
Sorry to say that I did NOT like this wine, and the tastes I could parse out were from multiple strained sips.
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