Tasting – Put A Cork In It Sweet Red Wine

Put A Cork In It – Red Dirt Road Sweet Red Wine – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma – $15.99

 

This wine is unique because it was actually purchased from a winery in Oklahoma City. My roommate went for a tour and a wine tasting and brought a few bottles of this back! I wanted to taste it and compare what I thought to the other red wines I have been drinking this semester. First, this one is Sweet Red Wine, not Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot or Pinot Noir… but Sweet Red Wine. That’s kind of strange to me… Did they just use many types of grapes and they cannot claim it to be anything but a blend? I cannot find any information on this wine on the internet, so the description on the back of the bottle will have to suffice. Unfortunately, there isn’t much information on the back of the bottle. Actually, the extent of it is as follows:

Winemaker Review: A delicious sweet red wine infused with flavors of berries. Serve Chilled.

That was interesting – serve chilled. A red, chilled? I thought my roommate just liked chilled red wine until I read that. Anyway, many things about this wine are different than I am used to. The lack-of-name and lack-of-information suggests that this is an amateur operation, but everyone has to start somewhere! I look forward to seeing if I can tell a difference between this sweet red wine and other red wines I have had, and maybe I can tell what types of grapes or fermentation methods were used!

 

My Review:

The first thing I noticed about this wine was its low alcohol content — only 9% ABV. Most reds I have had since beginning this class are 14%+. The second thing I noticed was its light red color, as pictured. As I swirled and sniffed this glass, I could really detect “sweet” but not much else than that. Quite literally, it smells like sugar-covered strawberries. I cannot sense any acids or dynamic scents, and it seems pretty one-dimensional. And the taste was just as flat — this was like drinking grape juice. Now, I’m not complaining; it’s delicious. Like Kool Aid, actually. This is the easiest-drinking wine I have ever had, because it tastes non-alcoholic. There is no hard finish or tart tannins that make you sip. I’d rather chug. Before this, I really had no idea what Professor Boyer meant when he called a wine “flabby.” Now I understand, because this wine is very unbalanced. The high sugar content seems like it is a result of under-fermentation, which accounts for the low alcohol percentage. Everything is coming together! I would not purchase this wine for myself, as I prefer a more complex flavor profile. This is good for the beginner red wine drinker, but it’s just not my cup of tea wine.

 

CHEERS!