Two very nice Xmas and New Year Discoveries!

I tend not to like beers and wine too much, so I'm always really quite happy when I discover a new liquer or some other unusual drink that I end up liking quite a bit!

The first of my end of year discoveries, was a home made Japanese rice wine that a friend had cooked up a batch of. He had made several different batches, one with normal rice, another with the same batch but sweetened up with a bit of extra sugar and a final one with sticky glutinous rice.

For the dinner, I had the regular one. That was really quite a nice taste, not too sweet but not at all acidic or sour. I was really quite suprised to hear that it was just cooked rice and yeast (plus water and a bit of sugar) left to ferment! After dinner, I tried out the sweetened one... definitely a different experience, and slightly stronger in alcohol as well.... but I have to say that despite my usual preference for the sweeter liquors that I preferred the non-sweetened version. However, we had finished off the regular batch, and so it was a little pot of the sweetened rice wine that we ended up taking home from dinner.

At the end of the night, we did try the one that was made from the glutinous sticky rice... this was unfortunately a bit of a disappointment, with a strong acidic taste. Perhaps a bit of extra sugary sweetness would be useful for that one!

Second on my end of year discoveries was a really NICE sherry! I'm not ordinarily a port or sherry drinker, but after this taste of this particular one... I'm sold!

My wife was preparing a sort of creamy trifle dessert to take to Christmas... but the recipe had called for a particular sherry. Pedro Ximenez... which we didn't have. We had something that probably would have worked, a sort of Cloudberry liquor from Finland with a similar sultana sort of taste that the recipe had described... however, I was out at the supermarket doing the shopping when I had gotten a message asking if I could look for it.

Sadly, I didn't find any... but seeing as I was just across the road from the bottle shop, I decided to just drop in to see if it was there anyway. I showed the shop assistant the name "Pedro Ximenez" and he instantly knew what it was... so, a sign of my sherry ignorance then!

At 7 euros for a half sized bottle, it's not so expensive... and whilst the dessert was being made up, I gave it a try. WOW... this is one of the perfect after dinner drinks or nightcaps. A sweet sultana flavour... and SOOO SMOOTH!

If you haven't heard of this drink, and you do like the sweeter end of liquors... you HAVE to try this one! Trust me, you won't regret it at all!

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