Wine Wednesday (the last)|Trader Joe’s Reserve GSM

Happy Wednesday!

Today we have a lovely little bottle from the Trader Joe’s Reserve line.  There have been a couple of bottles from their “reserves” that have made it into a Wine Wednesday post – mostly because they are really pretty good!  Good value goes far around here.

This particular wine – called “GSM” which stands in for “Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre” -  is from Paso Robles (our region of choice for California wine) and is a nice blend.  Full bodied without being syrupy or “heavy” it had some nice ripe fruitiness to it (the label refers to dates and plum – I’d agree).  All in all, a perfectly respectable wine for it’s $9.99 price tag.  Give it to a red wine drinker as a gift and I think they’ll be pleased with both the thought, and the present!

This is going to be the last “regular”* Wine Wednesday post – we’ve been at this for about six months now, and honestly, we’re just running out of steam for wine tasting.  I’ve been very happy with the experiment overall; it’s gotten me to try a lot of different wines, I now have an opinion about many of the wines in our wine section at work (which was the point of this project), and I feel a little more comfortable with wine language**.  I’m sure we’ll still come across an occasional bottle that I’ll want to share, but for now, it’s been fun tasting these!

Cheers.

Box Wine Rating Recap:

Trader Joe’s Reserve GSM 2008

Rating:  

*”Regular” is in quotes because these have been far from regular – but I try!
**In truth, the thing I learned most in doing this project is photography.  I do feel more comfortable talking about wines and even recommending them (mostly because I’ve realized that recommending a wine is more about confidence than it is about any particular knowledge – in fact, simple is often better when talking to people about wine.  Simply stating, “I really enjoyed this – it went well with (whatever we had for dinner) and it’s a great value” goes farther with most people than musing on about “nose” or “bouquet” or “legs” – unless you’re talking to a real winophile, but then, they hardly ever ask for help!), but what I really learned in this exercise is the value of doing something over and over again to improve, and here that was taking pictures of wine bottles.  Which is actually a fairly complicated thing to do.  My photos have flaws-o-plenty, but even my perfectionist brain can see that there is improvement, and I learned a lot about fill and background and framing, mostly from my amazing photographer husband, who has infinite patience with me and my learning.