Wine Tasting Blog: Lucky Duck

For my second wine that I decided to sample for this blog, I decided to go as cheap as I possibly could, because I just felt too spoiled getting bought a 16 dollar bottle of wine for my first blog post...classic college student. As I was perusing the the options that our local Walmart had to offer, I ran across this wine, Lucky Duck. I would not normally reach for a wine of this price, but I only had a few remaining dollars from my parents most recent allowance, and I desperately needed dryer sheets, so the last $3.97 went towards this wine. It is a Tempranillo wine hailing from Spain, I later found that this is one of Spain's more popular types of wine...Tempranillo, not Lucky Duck specifically.  Oddly enough the bottle did not have a vintage on the label anywhere to be found. I guess 4 bucks doesn't buy you that much information.

Here is an excerpt of a review of Lucky Duck Tempranillo:

"The wine itself was a dark garnet color in the glass, and the aromas of dark cherry were pretty in your face.  That cherry and some berry carried into the palate in what was a very bright, fruit forward wine, but also very clearly a Tempranillo.  With a dinner of beef stew that the wife had been cooking all day it was a nice bright note against the heartiness of the meal.

If you’re looking for a quality Tempranillo that really shows off all that the grape has to offer, look elsewhere.  If you’re looking for a cheap bottle of wine that’s different than the usual varietals you see on the shelves, than you should absolutely give this one a whirl.  I mean, what do you really have to lose beyond the four bucks?"

-thegoodwineguru.com


My personal review of this wine is pretty divided. It is mostly divided between the senses of smell and taste. We all know that most of the taste is in what you smell, but this wine in particular seemed to be good to one sense and not so good to the other. I got kind of excited as I opened the bottle and took my first smell. It smelled very fruity and there was absolutely a distinct cherry smell that arose immediately. Also after some investigation I found a nature-grassy smell that followed the cherry. So that was the sense the wine was good to. As far as tasting, I found the wine relatively unpleasant. No matter how I let the wine breathe or swirled it around, the alcohol was always a bit overwhelming. Nevertheless, I had paired this wine with a Japanese style meal of steak and vegetables which actually went pretty nicely together. But once the steak was gone I figured there was nothing left for me to do but incorporate the remaining wine into my Friday night pregame and give up on trying to enjoy it. So my final word on Lucky Duck Tempranillo is a no-go, unless you aren't really looking for great taste and only have a few daneros. But I did get something positive out of the experience, and that is that I'd like to try more Tempranillo because I could see a good one being quite enjoyable.