Wine Time 13: Seagram's Nine Hills Shiraz

Seagram
465 rupees
13.5% alchohol

I usually keep the empty bottles of wine we've drunk until their contents either get written up here or we've completely forget what exactly the wine was like. I'll try to clear up the backlog, and then at least the apartment will stop looking so much like a frat house.

Here's another wine from Seagram's relatively new Nine Hills line. We reviewed the Chenin Blanc a while back.

Well, we thought this was a good everyday wine, but it's not going to amaze you. It had a very pleasant, smooth, fruity taste, and it was fairly full-bodied and balanced. It other words, it didn't taste like watered-down juice and it didn't have any particular overwhelming taste -- I think most people who like red wine would find this pleasant.

And it also happens to go well with the spicy dark taste of plumcake -- and that's a big plus at this time of year. So we give it a 7.5.

Wine Time 9: Seagram Nine Hills Chenin Blanc

Seagram
Rs. 415
12.5% alcohol

As we continue to clear the decks with bottles we've drunk recently, we come to the second of the Seagram's wines we've tried out.

It was a bit of a surprise -- I had it in my mind that chenin blanc was a very mild, sometimes almost watery wine. But this was a concentrated, quite sweet, slightly bubbly wine. It was tasty and fun. We completely randomly had it with masoor dal (yellow lentils with lots of spices), and that's not what this wine is for. As the label says rightly, it will "pair well with [light] salads and appetizers." Actually, we think its sweetness might not even work for many appetizers -- this would probably be nicest as a dessert wine, or something to sip with a biscuit. It would be a good wine to drink on most occasions when you'd be drinking champagne.

It's a solid 7.