Sacrilege?

I'm not such a big fan of wines in general... I'll drink them... but in general, I just don't seem to get the same appreciation and pleasure that other people seem to get out of them. Of course, there are exceptions... when a wine is matched really well to a food dish, well... then it can be quite something else... but mostly, that's not really going to be the case... and in those situations, I would rather have something else (cidre is my top choice....)!

However, dessert and sweet/spiced wines are something else completely... if I had my way, I would happily order a dessert wine to have with my main meal at a restaurant... except that my wife doesn't let me, as she is just too embarrassed that I would even consider doing that. Apparently, it is bad enough that I will order coffee with the main meal... or eat potato crisps to accompany coffee/tea. However, at home... I can do what I want.. and I only have to suffer the indignity of my wife rolling her eyes at me... rather than being pushed out the restaurant doors.

In Europe, it had been crazy hot weather... and so we were going through ales and beers and ciders pretty quickly! However, I did find this mulled/spiced wine in the cellar. Oddly enough, it was from IKEA... my wife thinks it was a present from one of the head guys at IKEA in The Netherlands, when she was teaching their children. The labelling could really use some work... but as we all know, the proof in the tasting...

Now, the really sacrilegious thing that I was contemplating was to refrigerate the mulled wine and to drink it cold... after all, there are some dessert wines that are really nice served chilled! Well, I contemplated... and then I did it! I skipped asking my wife, as I'm pretty sure that she was going to pooh-pooh the idea (and when she found out.... she did...).

Surprisingly enough (or perhaps not..) it was really very good! Spiced wine (that you normally have heated in the cold of winter) works really really well chilled in the heat of the summer!... and my wife did concede that it wasn't as bad as she thought it was going to be... although, I'm not totally sure that that was a stamp of approval... but I will take it!