It's not you, it's me

Believe it or not, there are some times I just don't feel like having wine. (Yeah, I know. I think Hubby wanted to know when the aliens were going to bring his wife back when I told him that.) This weekend we tried out a few bottles, but for the most part, my  taste buds weren't really into it. Felt like more of a chore than a pleasant pastime. YIKES.

Was it the wines? We had an '09 Riesling from By Chadsey's Cairns (PEC) and opened a bottle of Sugarbush Vineyards '08 Not Red, both bought during this year's Mother's Day tour of the County. But the flavours and aromas fell flat; they were so ... meh. So ordinary. I couldn't find anything to get excited about, even though they were wonderful when I first tried them at the wineries. Maybe that's it? Maybe place and time has more of an impact than we think when it comes to wine?

Was it the weather? Sometimes a wonky barometer will throw me off my game in terms of tasting. Ottawa only got a few straggling gusts of wind off of Irene's tail feathers, not really amounting to much in terms of "active weather". But it was enough to ruin my plans for a trip to the Foire Gourmande over in Montebello, a food and wine festival that straddles both sides of the Ottawa River, with a pedestrian ferry shuttling in between. Learned about it from Roger Emard at Clos Baillie; this was the second year for the fest. But the threatening skies and doom-and-gloom from the WeatherNetwork kept me housebound. Harumph.

Or maybe it's just me. We *did* end up having a rather delicious Caves Velhas 2008 Serradayres Ribatejo (Portugal) with surf n' turf. Rich aromas of blackberry, plums, violets, dark chocolate and coffee grounds. On the palate, fleshy, ripe fruit and firm tannins. Long, lingering finish of coffee and herbs.

I guess the weekend wasn't a complete write-off, then. But let's hope the "meh"-days aren't too frequent.