Wine Number 16 or "The Curse of the Southern Winery"

Clinch Mountain Winery Clinch River Red:

This is the second wine I've had from this winery... the first one can be found below and it was the first truly poor wine of my journey. This wine, although I can't classify it as poor, wasn't all that great either. At the winery I was seducted by its sweetness, by the journey through the mountains to the winery itself, and by the notion of buying and bringing home some goddamn wine!

At any rate, what is it with the Southern palate that calls for their wines to be overly sweet and sugarfied. One of my favorite Southern winery wines, the Highland Mountain Muscadine, is definitely sugarfied, but it is made well and that makes up for it. They can't keep it on the shelves and have a waiting list to even be able to obtain any. Their dryer wines? No problem getting those.

Unfortunately the nationwide result is a snobbish upturn of the nose towards Southern wines altogether. They are not taken seriously, except by true wine adventurers who are willing to take the plunge, take the trips, and accept the fact that you will find many bad wines before you get to the truly great ones.

At any rate, the Clinch River Red I got was the "dryer" version of this particular wine, and holy cow there is some added sugar in here. I mean seriously, to me a "dry" wine means NO added sugar... lets the grape speak for itself... it puckers the lips and makes you want either water or an ice pop or something. It is made entirely [?] from the Concord grape, according to the website anyway, but there is no indication of even a grape on the bottle and the name implies a blend. On the nose you get sweetness... seriously. Honey notes and maybe something syrupy [like say if you made plum syrup or something]. Taste is much more awkward, more plum syrup and it basically falls apart. Drinkable and if you roll with white zin and other sugarfied wine cooleresque stuff you may even like this wine.

Wine Count: 16; Grape Count: 15.