Brett on Stuff

Without revealing my sources… lets just say I had some dehydrated wine appear at my home one day last week. Sold in Europe and not FDA-approved in the USA this may be tricky to obtain – but - is it worth the effort?

Lets do the taste-test…

First the goods – comes nicely packaged in a foil pouch. Weighing in a 2.1 oz – considerably less than your average 1 liter bottle, it’s looking good so far…

Emptying the powder into a bowl, it has a distinctive musty smell – kind of like old cork. Can’t be bad, right? Perhaps it’s a vintage year?

The directions call for mixing with 6 oz of cold water, and letting stand for 5 minutes.

I was rather hoping it would make more than this… but I’m still hopeful… maybe the powder/liquid ratio helps the alcohol content, and the taste will be more divine this way…

After about 6-7 minutes of stirring – trying to get the powder to dissolve and get rid of the lumps, I finally give up and reach for the strainer.

Strained into a wine glass, the wine now has a delightful white scum layer floating on top… ok… I’m starting to get nervous…

I try and overlook the rotting beetroot smell as I bring the glass to my lips for the taste test… mind over matter, I really really want this to work out. It’s dehydrated wine for heavens sake – cut it some slack.

“A nice fruity bouquet, wonderful legs, earthy structure, revealing layers of ripe berries, currants and vanilla oak.”

These aren’t the words I would use. I tried really hard – but the following is the BEST I could come up with.

“Clumpy, musty odor, like drinking beetroot juice spiked with cheap vodka that has spoiled at the bottom of the ocean for three hundred  years. “

Needless to say… this sucker won’t be going in my pack on a trip anytime soon.

I wonder if I can sell the other two packets on ebay to recover my losses…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Backpacking, Food Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.