The Wine Shower: the wine lover’s alternative to a wedding shower

I have another confession to make: I really do not enjoy showers. Be it the wedding or baby variety, there is nothing I would like to do less than sit around for an afternoon surrounded by squealing women playing ridiculous games like Guess the Mess in the Diaper or The Toilet Paper Bride. And God help you if it is a dry event. I don’t care if the guest of honour is pregnant, the rest of us should still be able to indulge so the poor girl can drink vicariously through us.

All this to say, when I was in the horrible throes of planning my own wedding, I made it clear that there were to be NO SHOWERS. However, knowing my penchant for wine, one sneaky friend managed to convince me by suggesting a novel concept: the wine shower.

How It Works

Each guest is invited to bring two bottles of wine:

• one for immediate consumption at the shower
• one for the couple to cellar as a souvenir of their year of marriage

You can see why I was so easily convinced. It’s a FANTASTIC idea for any wine-loving couple. First of all, you get to taste lots of different wines at the actual event, then you get to keep as many bottles as guests for your collection!

As a nice touch, my friend brought a lovely little “guestbook” where each guest wrote the name of the wine they brought and drank, and the one that they left for us.

Our friends are the best

It has now been three years since our wine shower, and we still have a few bottles left. Last weekend we decided to open one, and we were not disappointed!

Domaine St-Pierre Vacqueyras 2009

Vacqueyras is an appellation in the Côtes du Rhône region. Located in the south of France, it is just north of the city of Avignon (famous for being the papal seat starting in the 14th century) and west of Orange. It is a region where you can still feel the influence of the ancient Romans, and it has lots of beautiful (and in some cases still used) ruins to show for it. It is an amazing area, with some of my favourite wines.

The amphitheatre in Orange dates back to the 1st century and is still used as an outdoor music venue in the summer

A brilliant Rhône Valley map c/o WineFolly (http://winefolly.com/review/cotes-du-rhone-wine-with-maps/)

This Vacqueyras was a blend of grenache (one of my favourite grapes) and syrah. The colour was a deep, rich ruby red that was practically opaque. On the nose, a fruit explosion. We pulled out the large Riedel glasses for this one, and the fruit aromas just filled the bowl. It was heavenly: dark fruit, plum, cherry, fig, sweet spices, cassis and mint/cedar/eucalyptus. When I finally got over sniffing my wine and tasted it, the flavour was just a continuation of all the lovely aromas, with the addition of more dried fruit like raisin and prune (a result of aging), plus some leather, sweet spice and smoke, due to the 6-12 months this wine spent aging in oak barrels. It was still a medium-full bodiedA wine’s body refers to its weight on the palate. It’s generally directly correlated to alcohol content. Lighter bodied wines are generally lower alcohol, and heavier wines are higher in... More  wine, with medium acidityAcidity is an important part of a wine’s structure that prevents a wine from being “flabby”. It’s what gives you that tingling sensation on your tongue and makes you salivate.... More, and after 7 years in the bottle, the tanninsTannins help form a wine’s structure, but generally only in red wines. Tannins come from the grape’s stems, seeds and skins, and to a lesser extent from the wood in... had softened right out. This wine was incredibly drinkable and I’m glad we didn’t leave it in the cellar any longer! If you still have a bottle of this lingering in your cellar, now is the time to drink it.

The first thing I did after drinking a glass of this wine was email Erica to thank her!

So the wine shower…great idea, right? Who’s with me?

Happy wining, friends!