Vella - Delicious Red

Ok, so last night the wife and I were having a hard time sleeping. It was about 1am when we decided to grab a snack at a 24 hour store. That snack was Caramel Nut Crunch cereal. But a snack alone wasn't about to put us to bed and my wife remembered we had some boxed wine in the fridge. So, my first wine pairing for the blog is: boxed wine Vella Delicious Red and a box of Caramel Nut Crunch. Hey, both came from a box, how interesting. I wanted to taste the wine before I had any cereal to see what I thought of it. First my nose picked up extremely sweet aromas of strawberries and raspberries and a bit of caramel that didn't hide the smell of alcohol. Wasn't the greatest wine I had smelled, but it wasn't anything less than I would have expected from a box. The taste was just as it smelled, sweet strawberry and raspberry flavors. Again, not less than I would expect from a boxed wine. However with a low alcohol content for a wine at 9.5%, it had a stronger alcohol taste for that range. My wife pointed out the fact that the box had been in the fridge for almost a month, which may have changed the flavor a bit. I know this is a funny wine to blog about, but hey I said was going to document everything from here on out!

The caramel crunch had a wonderful flavor right after a swig of the wine, making it taste sweeter than it might have by itself. After a couple handfuls of the crunchy greatness I took another swig of wine. It went from a fun, sweet, picnic wine to. . .nasty crap. The flavor changed drastically for the worse. So, what I am saying is this was not a pair made in boxey heaven. The wine was bitter and attacked the tongue, much like eating an orange after brushing your teeth.

The nastiness didn't stop us from drinking it, though, for it made for a very good cure for insomnia. My wife and I slammed our glasses, after which she slammed two more and we stumbled to bed with dreams of fine, expensive cheeses and Sonoma wines.