Visit to some old Blues

After a touch commute home, I decided to pop open a couple of old blueberry wines that have been in my library cellar.  First up: 2006 Shelly's Blues.  So named in honor of my good friend Shelly who gave me most of the blueberries for this batch as well as a collection of old blue riesling bottles that I used to bottle the wine, this was actually the very second batch of wine that I had ever made.

2006 Shelly's Blues
Color is pretty light--kind of an orange-ish rose color.  But the nose is unmistakeable--acidified.  Big whiff of acetic acid due to oxidation.  Darn those artificial corks I used in the beginning because they were easier to sanitize prior to bottling!  I've since switched to using premium natural cork because the artificial corks just don't age well and allow to much oxygen into the wine.  Too bad--that was my last bottle.


2009 Wild Maine Dry Blueberry
Dark red color.  Excellent, complex nose of blueberry (duh), vanilla, & leather.  Fruit forward on the palatte with good tannins and smooth vanilla oak finish.  The only drawback is the body is fairly light.  Very good, decent wine that went great with the left-over Freschetta pizza I warmed up for dinner.



All in all, a good experiment.  I was pretty confident that the Shelly's Blues was going to be acidified based on prior experience with those artificial corks.  Fortunately, the 2009 saved the day (and I still have 3 bottles of that).  It's a shame that my dry blueberry recipe is not well received at competitions because I like it!  I've got a few tweaks in mind to pump up the body in future batches.  Perhaps I'll start one soon...

Salute,

Noel