Wine Club Update: The Bon Jovi Wine

I promised an update on the wine I ordered from the Daily Grind wine club in September and here it is:

Here’s the description provided by the wine club:

Hampton Water, Languedoc Rosé 2019
Type: rosé – Region: Languedoc-Roussillon, France – Grapes: Grenache, Cinsault, Mourvèdre, Syrah – Appellation: Languedoc

A collaboration between Bon Jovi, his son, and Gerard Bertrand. A light garrigue character sits atop a bouquet of this dainty and pretty rosé. Underlying tones suggest white raspberry, currant and strawberry hull. The palate is light and vibrant, with brisk acidity and tangy citrus and tart-berry flavors that lend additional verve and lift through the close. 

My Personal Pod

There are three women with whom I unreservedly share air. Two have husbands with cancer and the third has a husband who is vulnerable and works home health with a vulnerable senior. We all have good reasons to be careful and they give me added incentive to minimize my risk since the stakes are so high. Two of these ladies came over to help me drink this bottle of wine.

The Verdict

Two of us prefer red wines and are fans of the Menage a Trois Midnight wine that we can get from the local grocery store. The third prefers sweet white wines.

We all liked Hampton Water. It was sweet but not too sweet. None of us are somaliers, so I won’t/can’t give you a flowery description of the wine. With us, it’s pretty much a thumbs up or a thumbs down. This was definitely a thumbs up.

Something Funny Happened

Now, none of us are what you would call young (by any stretch) and we were all anxious to dive into the bottle of Hampton Water immediately. We hadn’t even set the food out yet. However, none of us had ever seen a “cork” like this one and didn’t have a clue on how to open the bottle. We chatter like magpies (I’ve never heard a magpie but I’m guessing that we could out-chatter any bird, so pick one) and it was a little alarming to see us all trying to figure out how to get into this bottle. The next morning, I flashed on the three witches from Macbeth when remembering this part of the evening.

I tried a corkscrew, originally thinking that the “clear cork” was plastic. It’s not. It’s a glass stopper. A corkscrew was not going to work.

We tried spinning the stopper, which would have worked if it had grooves and screwed on and off. Instead, the stopper spins freely.

We tried a dinner knife to pry it off but the glass stopper is not shaped in a way that a dinner knife will find purchase.

We thought, “Well, maybe it’s like champagne” and spent a good bit of time passing it around to each have a go at it, pretending that it was a bottle of Brut and trying to not point it at anyone or anything.

For whatever reason, that didn’t work. It probably should have. We ended up pulling up a video on YouTube and shouting at the poor woman who obviously couldn’t hear us and kept talking about the wine. We egged her on anyway to hurry it up and open the bottle so we could see how it was done, eventually fast forwarding until we saw her start to open the bottle. In our defense, she did admit it was tricky.

I still can’t tell you what the trick was. After watching the video, our white wine lover figured out how to open the bottle. Apparently, you just use your thumb to push the stopper out. It looked easy when she did it. She tried to explain what we were doing wrong but our patience hadn’t improved with our struggles and so now I have nothing to report on that except “Good Luck”.

Next Month

The Daily Grind has just recently put out the selections for October and I’m hoping to get two bottles (since it turns out that three women can easily go through two bottles). In the event that that doesn’t work out, I picked up another interesting bottle at a local wine festival yesterday. The woman said that it was an old family recipe and insisted that I smell it before sampling. It smelled earthy, but in a good way. I think it will be a hit with my friend who likes sweet whites. I’m really interested to see what my fellow red lover thinks.

Here’s the description from the maker, Rebec Vineyards:

Rebec Sweet Sofia – Our “niche” herb-infused wine. A Bulgarian recipe presented by our winemaker Svetlozar Kanev. Some people call it Thanksgiving in a glass. Its a conversation piece, something you have never experienced before. Try serving with crusted meats or light sea foods, fresh herbal salads, or turkey.

Sounds perfect for November!

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Any tips, suggestions or commentaries on wine parties like this are appreciated. We are learning as we go.