Pinot Time and some wedding stuff...

Last night I ended up in the lovely Ballymount Estate, tasting wines for "Little" Sis's wedding. After a couple of Sauvignon Blancs, which were zingy but perhaps not suitable for what they are serving, we tried on a Villa Masetti Pinot Grigio 2008, would be delicious with the seafood starter.

For the red, we elected to take three different new world reds home to try on Sunday with some roast lamb [the wedding main]. They are all Chilean, which may seem blinkered but it's a good starting point. A decent Chilean Red with not too much fruit and some decent structure would make a pretty good wedding wine. A wedding wine has to be geared toward the casual drinker, and to that end it has to have a good dollop of ripe fruit and it has to be balanced and not too tannic, and most of all it has to be inexpensive! Anything good you get from a wedding wine after that is gravy.

If none of them work out there are a few more options available from the same supplier and if all else fails I can think of one wine that would definitely tick all the boxes - Protocolo!

Our host also gave me a bottle of a NZ Pinot Noir to try - Kahurangi Estate 2008. This is not the kind of wine I would recommend for a wedding and indeed as I decanted it I was surprised by just how light in colour it was and I was hoping it would not be too thin and anaemic.

It turned out to be quite light, but very pleasant all round, fruity with some decent acidity and a nice change from the more full bodied wines we normally drink. I have been making [a very small] effort to expand my palate, particularly towards Pinots in all their shapes and sizes, and hopefully as time goes on I can taste more NZ Pinots and become less of a complete bluffer on them.