by Patrick Ogle
Tennessee Mountainview Winery's Raspberry Wine Semi Dry is excellent as an aperitif or a great fruit wine to use creating cocktails.
Sure, wine from fruit other than grapes gets a bad rap. This is often deserved but as often as not the negative assessments are based on treating wines made with raspberries, blueberries or other fruit as if they were WINE. They lack the complexity of wine made from grapes and can be sweet and cloying.
Yet wine made WITH grapes can be awful too; fruit wines need not have an albatross hung around their collective necks.
This wine is a solid fruit wine. On its own it is not super sweet for a fruit wine. This still means the wine is sweeter than most wines made from grapes (excluding desert wines). It is pleasant enough but the acidity that marks top notch sweet grape-based wines isn't there.
Where this wine shines is in cocktails. Here are couple ideas for those.
Raspberry wine, soda water and a crushed mint leaves. BAM! Perfect summertime drink. How much wine you use versus soda water is up to you but Id suggest at least 2 to 1 ratio...probably 3 to 1. You could jazz this up with some vodka.
Raspberry wine, soda water, St. Germain....BAM perfect summertime drink #2 (if you want more sweetness? Use Sprite). Same ratio as above but toss in shot or so of St. Germain (or other Elderberry liquor). Again you could jazz this up with some vodka.
Raspberry wine, tonic, gin and a lime. Basically you are jazzing up your gin and tonic with the fruit wine.
I tried to come up with a drink similar to a "hurricane" using this wine and didn't manage anything particularly good. This does illustrate the fun you can have trying to create YOUR cocktail with this wine. Do not fear the fruit wines just know their place in the world of beverages.
Tennessee Mountainview Winery's Raspberry Wine Semi Dry is excellent as an aperitif or a great fruit wine to use creating cocktails.
Sure, wine from fruit other than grapes gets a bad rap. This is often deserved but as often as not the negative assessments are based on treating wines made with raspberries, blueberries or other fruit as if they were WINE. They lack the complexity of wine made from grapes and can be sweet and cloying.
Yet wine made WITH grapes can be awful too; fruit wines need not have an albatross hung around their collective necks.
This wine is a solid fruit wine. On its own it is not super sweet for a fruit wine. This still means the wine is sweeter than most wines made from grapes (excluding desert wines). It is pleasant enough but the acidity that marks top notch sweet grape-based wines isn't there.
Where this wine shines is in cocktails. Here are couple ideas for those.
Raspberry wine, soda water and a crushed mint leaves. BAM! Perfect summertime drink. How much wine you use versus soda water is up to you but Id suggest at least 2 to 1 ratio...probably 3 to 1. You could jazz this up with some vodka.
Raspberry wine, soda water, St. Germain....BAM perfect summertime drink #2 (if you want more sweetness? Use Sprite). Same ratio as above but toss in shot or so of St. Germain (or other Elderberry liquor). Again you could jazz this up with some vodka.
Raspberry wine, tonic, gin and a lime. Basically you are jazzing up your gin and tonic with the fruit wine.
I tried to come up with a drink similar to a "hurricane" using this wine and didn't manage anything particularly good. This does illustrate the fun you can have trying to create YOUR cocktail with this wine. Do not fear the fruit wines just know their place in the world of beverages.
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