Missed Resolutions

I think I may have to make a resolution that, in 2010, I'm going to look up a bit more on the wines I'm about to open - rather than check them out after they're empty and the taste has long lost that lingering feeling.

For the second night in a row, I'm thinking I make an "ooops" by not going to the net before reaching for the corkscrew. When I grabbed this bottle, I couldn't remember anything special about it and I simply thought it would fit the dinner plans.

And then I find out why I bought it in the first place...

320. 2004 Bodegas Beronia Rioja Reserva (D.O. Rioja - Spain)

I'd completely forgotten that I ran out to specifically pick up a bottle because this was voted the Best in Show for the 2010 Vancouver Magazine Best Value Wine Awards. Out of the 800 wines reviewed by the panel of judges that included a large cross section of the city's best-known names in wine, the Beronia topped the Best Medium Red category and was then chosen best of the bunch.

Rather than really working our way through the wine and trying to identify the strengths that were pointed out by the judges, Boo and I simply sat back sipping on it while plonked in front of the TV. Instead of looking for the unabashedly Old World style to the wine and the complex flavours of "plums, raspberries, vanilla, coconut," we just sipped away - without thinking that anything really jumped out us as strikingly good.

I may just be too much of a New World kind of guy, but I preferred the other two Spanish wines I was introduced to last month - the Can Blau at Tyrant's and the Sabor Real at the neighbours' progressive dinner.

I'm learning more about the flavours of Tempranillo (matched with Mazuelo and Graciano in this bottle), but it's not quite displacing my Barossa Shiraz yet.

I wonder if I subconsciously would have needed to like it that much more had I found the magazine website or made a note about the wine before we opened it?