Zin Vin

Wine, best glass while traveling and where:  Beringer White Zinfandel, 1997, ms Veendam, somewhere in the St. Lawrence River

I've mentioned it before, but I'm not a big drinker.  I'm far more likely to cook with alcohol than to drink it.  Even so, I did take a couple of wine tasting tours in the Barossa Valley, as well as a couple of wine tours in Québec.  I knew before the tours that I prefer sweet wines to dry ones, and I prefer sweet whites at that.  I really do not like very many red wines, I think it may be the tannins, but I honestly do not know enough to say even that much for sure.

In the Barossa, I surprised myself by really, really like Bethany Vineyards Cabernet Franc Rose, which is not only a red wine (okay, blush), but also much drier than anything I would have thought I would enjoy.  Also during the tastings, I discovered I really, really like select late harvest wines, which are, according to the people in the tasting rooms, wines made from grapes left on the vine until they are practically raisins.  They intense, sweet wines, very much like the ice wine I loved in Québec.

But all of those were tasting wines, none were really full glasses.  If we are talking full glasses of wine, that would have to go to either a glass of Beringer White Zinfandel, 1997 from the bottle that was a gift from my travel agent on my very first cruise.  Apparently 1997 was a particularly good year for the White Zinfandel, and I think I drank eight or nine bottles of that particular vintage before I could no longer find it, which is a lot for a non-drinker like me.