Tasting - Columbia Valley Riesling

Name: Chateau Ste Michelle Riesling
Variety:  Riesling
Region: Columbia Valley
State: Washington
Country: USA
Year: 2017
Price: $10

Winery Review: "The wine offers crisp apple aromas and flavors with subtle mineral notes. This is our "everyday Riesling" that is a pleasure to drink and easy to match with a variety of foods."

My Review: Me and a friend decided to have this Riesling while we watched the wine movie for this week, and we wanted to get close to the suggestion. We went for a Riesling that was a little less sweet, but not totally on the dry side. I thought it was a pretty good wine, and a good first impression on Riesling. It had a light body with a high acidity that balanced pretty well with the sugars. When thinking about the aroma, it had the same fruity nose that I remember from a Sauvignon Blanc that had a few weeks prior. It didn't taste much like that wine as it incorporated pear and citrus flavors along with earthy characteristics that resembled soil. This was a very refreshing and easy to drink wine that has left me looking into getting another Riesling down the road.

Tasting - Owl's Leap

Name: Owl's Leap Chambourcin
Variety: Chambourcin
Region: Shawnee Hills
State: Illinois
Country: USA
Year: 2010
Price: It was a gift! (Finding the price is difficult due to the winery's website not telling me...) It might be $15.99

Winery Review: 

I looked hard to find the winery review or any other in depth review and I was not coming up with much. The winery's website doesn't have much information on their wines because it looks like that part of the site is down. This is what was on the bottle, "Owl's Leap is a wonderfully full bodied, dry red wine that expresses the spiciness of Chambourcin grapes and oak barrel aged for a full year."

My Review:
This was my first try of my hometown local wine from southern Illinois in the Shawnee Hills AVA. It was a gift from back home, along with a few other local wines that will have reviews coming, and it was my first try of a hybrid. Lots of the wines there are produced with hybrids and Chambourcin seems to be one of the more popular varieties there. With this, it was fairly different and really good when compared to European varietals. The aroma was the first thing that jumped out as different. It had a sort of spicy, peppery combination with maybe tobacco. It was definitely full bodied and had a unique mouthfeel that I hadn't seen before. In the palate, cherries predominated with leathery flavors and spiciness. Despite it being different from the other wines I've tried, I really liked it. I had to stop myself from having more because I knew it would be a while before I could get my hands on more of it. Here's to hoping the other hybrids live up to this new expectation.