Two Oceans 2012 Chardonnay: Great Value

This 10 dollar wine is considered a great value by Wine Align. It was my original target, the day I was led widely astray by this Astrolabe monstrosity.

As you know dear readers, I am no wine expert. My palate is as undisciplined as a teenager being raised by hippies in biosphere 3.  So please forgive me when I admit I didn't like this wine.

Certainly, it has a flavour almost as deep and complex as the hateful Astrolabe, but at only half the cost. But if my instinct after drinking half a glass is to add some Perrier, then I have to ask, is there a problem with me or a problem with the wine?

Yeah, I also think the problem is me. Not sure I'm going to succeed at this whole "be more grown up about my drinking" thing.

Next time, I'll move off Chardonnay but try to stick to the same price point. 

Astrolabe is Emperor-Has-No-Clothes Brand Sauvignon Blanc

Now that I'm in my 30s I've decided I need to be more grown-up about my drinking. It's ok to consume an entire bottle in an evening if it's really really good wine, right?

Problem: I'm too lazy and cheap to become a wine expert. Also, I have a vague suspicion that much of wine appreciation is all "the emperor has no clothes" anyways.

Seriously, give these pompous-dick wine experts some baby duck in a sippy cup, are they gonna know the difference? Ok, maybe they would, but I prefer to indulge my laziness, and not pay the 600 dollars to do the sommelier program at Algonquin.

Instead, I signed up for a free registration at Wine Align. Terrible name, right? Sounds like a workforce-reduction civil servant project to me, but I was excited by their list of top 25 world-wide value wines.

I hit the LCBO today, fully intending to get the Two Oceans chardonnay off the list for a resounding 11 dollars. Instead, I was sucked into the Vintages section and started blindly looking at the stock.

This one caught my eye:

Priced at $22 dollars, the modern label makes a statement. Astrolabe. This wine must be manufactured by sentient Japanese robots, and sent back to us through time from the year 2030. Drinking this wine is going to make me cooler than Lois Lane taking her clothes off in Superman's fortress of solitude. This wine will be so amazing it will ruin my taste buds for that shitty Wolf Blast stuff my in-laws serve when they want to impress.

So.

I buy it.

And fuck the clerk for not asking me for ID. I totally looked 25 today, guy.

I rush home and put it in the freezer to cool it quickly to the optimum (?) cold temperature at which one enjoys a white wine. Meanwhile, I check my instincts on Wine Align and I am vindicated:

Everybody loves this wine.

It is described as powerful and complex, with intense aromas and flavours of passion fruit, gooseberries and freshly cut herbs. At least one wine snob calls it his current "go to" sauvignon blanc.

Clearly, I am a wine genius.

Then I taste it.

It evokes hay pissed on by livestock. The reviews are right, it has a long finish, but I don't want this taste to linger.

Like bad sex, I just want it over.

Now. 

Kind readers, you should not trust my judgement. Clearly, I am a wine philistine. Trust the experts.

Please excuse me now while I wash my mouth out with some diet root beer.