Organic Wines at Garden Café in Woodstock

By Louise | Organic

Jan 12

photo(36)I had a lovely relaxing weekend in Woodstock, NY this past weekend.  While I was there, I had dinner at a vegan restaurant called Garden CafĂ© (I’m not even vegetarian, but the restaurant got great reviews and the food, especially the cabbage soup was fantastic).  As you might be able to see from the rather shoddy photo I took of their wine list, all their wines are made from 100% organic grapes.  (Some of the wines are also vegan, which I will explain in my next post!)

Onto the wines I tried there….

photo(35)1)  Snoqualmie Naked Riesling from Columbia Valley, Washington, USA, which was $7 a glass and $26 a bottle at the restaurant, but which retails for $9-13 in wine stores and online.  This was also a vegan wine.

I loved the way this wine smelled – of sweet honey (not flowery or sickly sweet, but of almost a fruity honey).  The taste was bitter-sweet.  There was the bitterness of grapefruit mixed with the sweetness of apples and pears.  The sweetness level was probably that of an off-dry wine i.e., sweet-tasting but not much actual sugar in the wine.  It’s not my favorite Riesling, but I am definitely partial to off-dry Rieslings, and so this was definitely a “Like” for me.  I have to say, I was quite surprised that I liked the wine because I rarely like any non-German Rieslings and was a bit scared of trying a cheap organic one.  It was a very pleasant surprise!

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2) Gerard Bertrand Grenache from Languedoc, France, which was $9 a glass and $34 a bottle at the restaurant, but which retails for around $12-15 in stores (although it seems to be only carried in a few NY and CA stores and some online stores).

I don’t know if you can tell from the photo on the left, but this was a rose.  There was a fruity smell, which was faintly reminiscent of strawberries.  Despite this alluring smell, the taste was awfully bland.  It was definitely a light wine.  In fact, the wine tasted so watery, I wondered if it contained any alcohol in it at all!  It was very disappointing, especially since I had tried the Riesling first.

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