Lucky Duck Cabernet Sauvignon

To kick off Superbowl, we opened a bottle of Lucky Duck. It's a cheapo $4.00 wine at Wal-mart, but I figured it was worth a try. It's a chilean wine, which commonly is known for "cheap" wine. However, I read somewhere recently that the weather is gradually improving in Chile, allowing it to produce higher quality wines.
It's a very dark wine. It smelled sweet, but wasn't quite as sweet as I predicted. It had a lot of cherry flavor and some berry tastes too. It had a rich, drying feeling, and not much of an aftertaste. Although red wine is supposed to be served at room temperature, I couldn't help but wonder if it would be better chilled. We were drinking it with snacky appetizers, like buffalo wings and chips. I didn't much like sipping it, but thought maybe it was because I paired it wrong.
A few days later, I had a glass with dinner, and we had it with pizza. It tasted better this time around. I'm not sure if it was because of a better food pairing, or if it was simply because the wine had been open for a few days. Either way, the wine itself was a decent $4.00 spent.

2006 GatoNegro Shiraz

On Thursday we had dinner at Bethany's house. Noah and I brought a bottle of GatoNegro Shiraz. We actually bought this wine over a year ago. Right before I found out I was pregnant with Keegan, we went to Safeway and picked out 6 bottles of wine at random that we thought we should try. Shortly after, I found out I was pregnant, and we never drank any of them. So what better time than now?

The bottle describes the wine as a blend of cherry, raspberry and tannins. It had a very strong and recognizable oak flavor. It was very bold, and almost a bit too bold for me. It was very drying in my mouth. Noah really liked it. It went well with the our entree. We had it with meat lasagna, ceasar salad, and bread with vinegar and oil.

I'll be interested to try another shiraz and see if it was just this particular shiraz I didn't care for, or if shiraz in general is just too bold for me.