{"id":215,"date":"2007-06-25T11:20:43","date_gmt":"2007-06-25T18:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/danthewineguy.com\/?p=215"},"modified":"2007-07-02T11:26:15","modified_gmt":"2007-07-02T18:26:15","slug":"viognier-blind-tasting-winner-9-pepperwood-grove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/?p=215","title":{"rendered":"Viognier Blind Tasting Winner: $9 Pepperwood Grove from Sonoma County"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blind tastings can be a lot of fun because they\u2019re easy to set up, they allow you to sample a variety of wines at one sitting, and they often provide you with interesting results.<\/p>\n

\"null\"This happened to me at a blind tasting with friends earlier this month. We sampled six Viogniers during the evening and the group favorite was \u2013 surprise \u2013 a $9 bottle from Sonoma Valley\u2019s Pepperwood Grove. The wine easily beat out five other competitors from Europe, California and Washington \u2013 some of which were priced as much as $30 a bottle.<\/p>\n

I have to admit that the Pepperwood Grove was at the top of my list. I noted that it had lovely floral and peach aromas, gentle apricot and peach flavors and a slightly creamy finish.<\/p>\n

To see if this was just a fluke, I later tried the Pepperwood Grove 2005 Pinot Noir (also about $9) and the wine turned out to be another winner. It\u2019s packed with red currant and strawberry flavors, good acidity and a slightly spicy finish with a touch of vanilla. Very nice.<\/p>\n

The cool thing about Pepperwood Grove wines is that they\u2019re widely distributed, meaning you\u2019ll have no problem finding them in the wine section at your local grocer. Another plus is that the wines are frequently on sale \u2013 usually in the $6 to $7 a bottle price range, which I think makes them an incredible value.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t be a wine snob. Sometimes an inexpensive wine can be comparable to one that\u2019s two to three times the price. But you\u2019ll never know until you give it a try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blind tastings can be a lot of fun because they\u2019re easy to set up, they allow you to sample a variety of wines at one sitting, and they often provide you with interesting results. This happened to me at a blind tasting with friends earlier this month. We sampled six Viogniers during the evening and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-bellingham-herald"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}