CheapWineFinder Long Distance Wine Tasting

The Story

PPE, six-foot social distancing, lockdown, masks, wash your hands every time you touch something, cross the street when you see someone walking towards you, so much for your favorite pub or restaurant, and stand in line to enter the grocery store, the so-called new reality.

Well, we have our XLR microphones and our FaceTime cameras, Quake and Dave decided to do a long-distance wine tasting, alone together. Luckily Quake has a Zoom account for business, we plugged in the podcast equipment and had a party. Kind of like usual, only this time we were in different towns about thirty-five miles away from each other.

We checked if we both had the same wine available and it turned out we both had the Federalist Bourbon Barrel Aged Zinfandel in our respective wine racks. So we pop the top on a Zin, fired up the computers, and had us a wine tasting.

In this age of shelter at home, while it wasn’t as fun as the real thing, it was a pretty satisfying experience and a welcome change of pace. We both happened to have this Zinfandel because it was leftover from the whole line of Federalist wines that were sent to each of us to celebrate these wines being available at Chicago Cubs games.

We both had the Bourbon barrel-aged Red wines leftover because neither one of us was sure about the whole bourbon barrel thing. Wine barrels are toasted by flame, each level of toast, light, medium, dark offer different oak flavoring. Bourbon barrels are charred, they really put the flame to these barrels, and bourbon whiskey can stand up to strong oak flavors. Wine, not so much.

As it turned out the Federalist Bourbon Barrel Mendocino Zinfandel was well-balanced and full of flavor. No odd or extreme whiskey flavors, just loads of ripe fruit and spice. At times we did more sipping than podcasting, we were very happy with our wine choice.

The long-distance wine tasting concept works surprisingly well, we plan to do more and we recommend you give it try. We matched our wine selection, but a potluck wine tasting will work just as well. Do not let a stupid virus slow you down, stay safe, and keep friends and family safe. But maybe it is time to forge a new reality.