Grandview Winery
1 review for Grandview Winery
Grandview winery has a tasting room in stowe and i found the experience interesting if a little predictable for new england wines. i went in and got a great deal, tasting 6 wines for $1.00. can't beat that! the first beverage i tried was their hard cider (you don't pick and choose what you taste, you just smile and drink) which the sales dude told me had a sparkling quality when freshly opened. i sampled. it was flat and didn't taste alcoholic. "did you open this bottle this morning?" "no, yesterday." YESTERDAY? no no no no. you do NOT serve day old sparkling hard cider to ANYONE. i don't care if it's wasteful to throw out a half empty bottle, you are doing your company a great disservice by offering up poor quality products.
the rest of the tasting was pretty banal. he didn't really know anything about the 2 real wines (well, hybrids anyway. sevyal and marchel foch) he had and then focused on sampling fruit wine. contemplating fruit wine makes my pulse quicken with dread and my head swoon. i approached the rest of the tasting with a healthy dose of fear of being served strawberry rhubarb wine, which i can tell you right now you should never ever ever taste. ever. it's horrible. taste may be subjective but strawberry rhubarb wine is offensive.
luckily i wasn't served any strawberry rhubarb wine, though i did try cherry wine (meh. fruit juice in a wine bottle. the end), raspberry-apple wine (no.), and blackberry wine. the sales dude tried to convince me that this would be "port-like" in taste and consistency. it was not. it was blackberry juice. as he mentioned food pairings that worked with it "with fruit for dessert or poured over vanilla ice cream" he told me to save half of my sip. huh? i don't even want to have the other half, okay i'll save it. then he turns around and drops a teaspoon of BAKERS CHOCOLATE SHAVINGS in it. WHAT? i'm all for food and wine pairings but not in the actual glass. then he smiled at me knowingly and told me to try it, that it would taste like a chocolate truffle.
it tasted like weak blackberry juice with chalky particles in it. oh, and he stared at my chest during the entire ordeal.