Our journey with Wine-of-the-Month Club started with an astonishingly fast and professional delivery where we received 6 bottles of wine to review. I did not even have time to track the parcel when I received a phone call to say it has been delivered. Already impressed I arrived home to find the parcel, neatly boxed and professionally packed with some extra information cards to put around the bottle neck providing extra information on each wine. The box also contained a really interesting magazine called Good Taste (I loved the recipes inside!)
The wine tasting was carefully planned so that the review could be done with our expert panel and avid wine drinkers. As the night progressed we reviewed and debated on the following wines:
VILLERIA OWL HOUSE SAUVIGNON BLANC 2015
At first glance, a pale straw colour with a nose of strong grapefruit and gooseberry. The grapefruit could be tasted throughout the mouth with a slight bitter “grapefruity” aftertaste. This dry white tasted really nice with our matured Gouda and preserved figs, bringing out the gooseberry flavours even more. It is definitely an easy drinking wine that the whole panel enjoyed. Click image to read more.
MARTINDALE CHENIN BLANC 2015
The pale straw colour had a definite nose of guava and honey, and an apricot taste on the tongue. Quite acidy, but smooth with a medium aftertaste and delicious with creamy cheese snacks. Click image to read more.
BERGSIG CHARDONNAY 2012
With a deep golden tone, rich buttery, almond and fynbos hints on the nose and a honeyed oaky delicious taste that impressed the panel a lot. Seeing that the Vineyards are younger than 20 years, I cannot wait to see what they will bring us in later years. DEFINITELY the panel’s favourite white. This wine is gorgeous, and seems to get even more delicious and buttery with every sip (and you have to try it with a pork chop from the braai – HEAVENLY) Click image to read more.
ERNST GOUWS & CO MERLOT 2012
A light ruby colour with a definite nose of fynbos and mulberry leaves. Very full bodied but also very tight. Sour cherry, fynbos tastes and lots of tannin. My recommendation – leave it to age for another 12 months to soften the tannin and bring out those dark chocolate flavours. Click image to read more.
CLOS MALVERNE CABERNET SAUVIGNON MERLOT 2013
Ruby brown colour on the eyes and a hint of smokiness on the nose. Dry but soft on the tongue with berry flavours and a hint of tannin. Lamb chops on the braai were the best accompaniment to this wine, and loved by the whole panel. A sure winner for any occasion. Click image to read more.
BOSCHENHEUWEL PINOTAGE 2014
On the eye it has a deep purple colour, earthy cranberry and plum tones and a full ripe berry flavour. What was very impressive was the longer you drank the wine, the more intense the cranberry became, making it almost sweet and very, very hard to put down. I’ve been thinking about this wine and its “magical cranberry powers” for days after the review and I have to say that this is a truly memorable impressive wine. Being a Pinotage, it can be well aged until 2018 and I can only dream about the incredible flavours it will have if you leave it until then. (I think I need to buy a few) DEFINITELY the panel’s favourite red…. one of my all time favourites of all reds – and I have tasted quite a lot of reds… Click image to read more.
Wine-of-the-Month Club’s site is definitely worth a visit. When you open the site, you immediately feel comfortable to use the site with their 4 Step guideline – only 4 steps to sip on your favourite wine? How much easier do you want it? When you are looking at the credentials of their panel & the process they follow by blind tasting every wine you know that you are getting the best quality – wow, what an impressive team.
Shopping on this site can be done in various ways, you can browse through and Shop for Wine (all panel selected) or Join A Club so that you can receive panel selected wine, as often as you like, delivered straight to your door. There is also a tab for promotions and looking at what they have available; you can definitely buy some excellent wines at really special prices. You can also buy other products from them like olives, olive oils, whisky, brandy, coffee, beer and super cool accessories.
Seeing that it is called Wine-of-the-Month Club. The wine clubs that you can join are made up of these 4 selections:
- Platinum Club
- Reserve Club
- Wine-of-the-Month Club
- Best Value Club
All with great wines, but at different price points.
What makes these clubs so different from other clubs is that you can control how many bottles you want and also how often you want to receive your order. All wines have been blind tasted by Wine-of-the-Month Club’s independent panel. By blind tasting over 2000 wines a year this panel concentrates on the most important thing… what is in the glass! Best part of all, you get to choose your own free gift when signing up to a club. Now that is impressive.
There are other clubs you can join to:
- Coffee Club
- Olive Club
- Brandy Club
- Whisky Club
- Champagne Club
- MCC Club
You can also personalise these orders to suit your personal taste and pocket which is so convenient and I love all the goodies available for each package that you can order.
For the avid wine readers and followers, Wine-of-the-Month Club also offers a blog with some really interesting articles on wines, farms and so much more with my favourite article including chocolate….. (I spent quite a lot of time reading the interesting articles and copying one of my favourite recipes)
We only got to review 6 wines, and were very impressed, cannot wait to try more of their vast selection of excellent wines, coffees, oils, whiskies, brandies and my ultimate favourite fortified wines in the future.
Head over to our Competitions page to win yourself these six bottles of wine courtesy of Wine-of-the-Month.
To learn more about Wine-of-the-Month Club, check out this cool video they put together:
