200th Post!! - Fruit Wine…or Wine with Fruit?

Margot and I excited to be celebrating our 200th blog post with some wonderful tasting notes on Margot's recent homemade wine, a Blackberry Cabernet.

It started out harmless enough. We had a few big bags of blackberries from our vacation house in Vermont. Like many others we had used these blackberries to make jam, cobbler, pie and in granola, cereal, yogurt and smoothies. Unlike many other people I happen to live with an award winning amateur winemaker, and I had been watching him…and learning.

So I made the decision that those blackberries were mine and I had a devilish idea. Jay had recently purchased some cabernet grape juice, and wouldn't you know that there were a few gallons left over. Hmmmm, I think I’ll take that too. Just like any good cook I looked at what I had around and created something interesting. Little did I know where the madness would lead.

The idea really stemmed from a wine kit that I had made a few years back, a Wildberry Shiraz. It was my first stab at winemaking and it came out quite good. Jay and I came to call it “Sangria in a Bottle.” Though it was a nice light summer sipper it just felt like the berry flavors really outweighed the Shiraz. So this time I had my heart set on a red wine with blackberry flavoring to bring out the natural berry undertones of the red wine, and with that the Blackberry Cabernet was born.

The ratio used was 6 pounds of blackberries to 3 gallons cabernet juice. The results have been fantastic (if I don’t say so myself). The nose on the wine definitely lets you know that this is a Cabernet. The blackberry is present but it enhances the expected berry notes in the Cabernet rather than overtaking and masking them. Upon first sip you realize that the nose did not lie, you taste Cabernet first and blackberry second. This is no berry juice wine, rather it is a Cabernet with the jammy, berry undertones you expect, those undertones are just brighter. Though I have yet to try it with dark chocolate I am sure that it would be a perfect match. Can you really go wrong with dark chocolate and berries? I think not. Well I guess Jay just may need to watch his back at the amateur wine competitions this year….wifey is pulling up from behind.

To steal from Jay…Cheers!

Margot