VQA Head-to-Head: Wine Swap

Know those cookie exchanges that happen around Christmas, where you trade a dozen of your baked goods with others until you have a full set of sweets to cover the holidays? Well, imagine if we replaced the cookies with WINE. Every guest brings a case and they trade out 11 bottles with other guests so that, at the end of the night, each person has a mixed box of new things to try. Um, YES PLEASE.


It all started on Twitter, with Corinna Horton (of Food Gypsy renown) throwing it out there:

To hell with the holiday cookie swap, who wants to swap #wine?!(Goooood Morning!)
— Corinna Horton (@thefoodgypsy) December 4, 2012

Word got passed around and a date was set. Prices were capped at $15/bottle; that's pretty much the only "rule" out there. Now it's just a case of deciding WHICH wine.

I've offered to bring a white. Something local, being the proud advocate for Ontario VQA that I am. Something that people likely haven't tried before. Something that the LCBO actually has in stock. I've narrowed it down to these six:

Strewn Gewurztraminer-Riesling (Niagara) L467662 $11.95
Sandbanks Estate Shoreline White (Prince Edward County) L177477 $14.95
Palatine Hills Quattro (Niagara) L305383 $14.95
Creekside Sauvignon Blanc (Niagara) L620724 $13.95
Peninsula Ridge Inox Chardonnay (Niagara) L594200 $13.95
Pondview Gewurztraminer-Riesling (Niagara) L260380 $13.95

I thought about doing up a grid March Madness-style, akin to what Dr. Vino does on his blog. But that smacks of effort; at a time when certain two-year-olds have decided it's no longer in vogue to sleep through the night, anything that complex makes me want to take a nap.

So I'm putting it to a vote. O ye of the Winosphere, pick your fave in the poll on the right. You've got until 9 AM on Friday, January 18 (when I need to go shopping.) GO!!

Cheers! Happy voting!