Tasting- Zibibbo

Name: Zibibbo
Variety: Fortified Italian Desert Wine from Sicily
Region: Sicily
Country: Italy
Year: 2010/2011 ???
Price: 10 Euro
Shop: Enoteca Siciliana- in Sicily last Spring
Review: This is a sort of fortified 'vino liquoroso'. It is candy in a bottle. However, there is no addition of liquor, instead it is fermented in the sun (partially) and distilled naturally. The man who grew the grapes and owned the vineyard told us that sun is good for the grapes and so is soil. That sounds obvious, but he was limited by our Italian vocabulary.You can tell there is a higher alcohol content, but it goes down very smooth. It is apparently good with pastries, fresh fruit and gelato. However, it is supposed to be a dessert wine so it should be. The smell is very syrupy and sugary. It does have almost a cherry-like smell to it. Also maybe some peach comes through in the smell. I did have the thought later that I could just be associating those two fruits with syrupy smells because often they are stored in syrup. The taste is also very powerfully sugary. After that initial blast of sweet there are other flavors, honestly, of very strong grape. It reminds me of medicine or vitamin grape flavor. I smelled it several times, never got anything new, but really enjoyed smelling it none the less. The higher alcohol content is almost buried in the smell and taste, but you can sense it in the thickness and buzz you get. Summary sentence: Yummy sugar wine from Italy.

Tasting- Vola Sangiovese

Name: Vola Sangiovese
Variety: Sangiovese
Region: Puglia
Country: Italy
Year: 2010
Price: $2.50- Recommended to me by a seemingly homeless man in Trader Joe's. Thought it would be a good story if it was good. It wasn't.
Shop: Trader Joe's
Review: This wine was terrible. It has a 13% alcohol content, and that is first and last thing you taste. It definitely burns like a shot, there is a faint resemblance to wine but only in the finish. And you can barely appreciate it due to the fact that you are wondering if your throat will ever grow that layer of skin back. I followed the steps provided by Gary on Wine TV. I swirled it first and smelled the wine immediately afterwards. The first bad sign was that all I could smell on the first try was vinegar. It reminded me of salad and cheap balsamic (my family is Italian and I am a vinegar snob). I swirled it again and I was able to detect a faint fruity smell, closest to berries. There was also a distinct bread smell. I thought this must be the yeast. It turned me off a little, although I do not know yet if I should have been excited by this smell. It might be a good thing in other wines. Then I tasted it, and I am sorry but I only had the endurance to do this once due to my low pain tolerance. It burned all the way down. I think the reason it was such a bad experience was because I was not expecting it to resemble hard liquor so closely. I did taste a red wine, not particularly dry, then the burn hit and I was too taken aback to register much more beyond the thought, "I am never taking the advice of a homeless man ever again." There is also a sort of apple after taste. Again, I was trying really hard to discern anything beyond the burn so I am not certain. The end was not so bad after the alcoholic burn went away. After a while longer it just felt like I had swallowed rubbing alcohol, all flavor was gone.

I tasted it two hours later like Drink This Now suggested. There was no change.
Leaving it out overnight was not effective either.
I plan on using this wine to clean my pipes if they ever get clogged with hair, but not ever again for drinking.