Shopping at Home: The Fallout

As I mentioned last time, the Mild Fiancée and I inherited quite a bit of wine. We had no intention of coming home with that much wine, but we did so anyway. Inevitably, that meant that we were going to try some of them. What would the point be otherwise? So that we could store them instead of someone else? That simply wouldn't do.

So, on one fine evening, we decided to be adventurous. We decided to crack open one of those wine bottles. Now, we're not connoisseurs by any stretch of the imagination, but we understand the basic chemistry well enough. Some of these bottles were old, and had not been stored in precise, temperature-controlled environments. Some of them were bound to be losses. The odds just weren't good that every single one was in good, drinkable shape.

So, with a laugh, we started in on our very own wine tasting. The first bottle we drew (randomly) happened to be a Chardonnay:

You can tell it's a Chardonnay because the bottle says so

That seemed like a safe enough choice, until we poured it out:

Note the color of the liquid matches the coaster

Um, Chardonnay is not supposed to be that color. As a wine-loving friend of mine noted when I sent her a picture (I was very, very amused by this), "It's. Orange." Why, yes, it is a nice shade of burnt sienna. Quite pretty, too. It's just not the color that your wine should be. That goes doubly so for a wine that is traditionally described as a "white" wine.

Of course, me being me, I had to try it. I didn't try a big gulp or anything, but I wanted to see if it was anywhere close to safe to drink. Let's just say that I had no desire to finish the glass.

Okay, so on to the next bottle. We tried to switch it up to a different type of wine, so we picked out a champagne from the collection. This one was a "Blanc de Blanc," which also amused me because it roughly translates to "white on white." Want to guess what color it should be?

Not that one

The picture doesn't quite do it justice, but it came out a nice golden color. Not just a little golden, but like the rich, imperial kind of golden that you see in movies. The kind of golden color that no one in their right mind would describe as "white on white." I took a sip of that one, too. Nope, we didn't drink that one, either.

The last of the bottles we tried was interesting, because it was supposed to be somewhat colorful. That one was a rosé. Basically, it's supposed to be a pinkish hue. This is what we got;

That's an awfully dark shade of pink

Now, I actually Googled this at one point, and it is seemingly possible to have a rosé that is a darker shade of red. This, however, was not one of them. We took a whiff and decided immediately that we weren't going to drink this.

However, we did start to figure out that the change in colors for these bottles was due to lots and lots of oxidation. Oxidation just so happens to be the same word used to describe to metal when it rusts, for what it's worth.

By this point, the Mild Fiancée had had enough. She has a stronger sense of smell than I do, so this exercise amounted to an assault on her nostrils. We ultimately settled on something we already had in the house, which we were happy to say was the correct color.

On the bright side, our fridge is much emptier now, and I know how to use the words "burnt sienna" in a sentence now.