{"id":2121638,"date":"2023-09-29T11:29:29","date_gmt":"2023-09-29T10:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/northwest\/?p=2121638"},"modified":"2023-09-29T11:29:29","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T10:29:29","slug":"romantic-wine-tasting-date-twinned-with-lifelong-loves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/northwest\/news\/2121638-romantic-wine-tasting-date-twinned-with-lifelong-loves","title":{"rendered":"Romantic wine-tasting date twinned with lifelong loves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Paul Sheerin, the owner of Defiance Spirits, has the fondest of memories of an Australian chardonnay<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s 1992. John Major is PM and Ugly Kid Joe was in the charts from the summer\u2019s movie hit, Wayne\u2019s World.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"wineclub.thebusinessdesk.com\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-2108192\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/_files\/images\/WINE-CLUB-STORY-SIZE-300x200.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a>I\u2019d been on a blind date with a Canadian girl and 13 days later I\u2019ve quit my job and my house was on the market. Fast forward three months and we\u2019re back packing through Sumatra and Java and ended up in Australia.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our first port of call was Western Australia, Margaret River to be precise. We hitchhiked from Perth with our lives intact and booked a wine tasting at the emerging Leeuwin Estate Vineyard.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The mode of transport was two dodgy rental push bikes. We are 24 years old and hardly wine connoisseurs. As we tasted our way through their portfolio, we finally ended up with lunch on their beautiful veranda overlooking a glorious vineyard. The wine we drank was Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay (today\u2019s prices \u00a379.00 per bottle, I think we paid $25 AUD for the whole experience).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was a new modern form of Chardonnay &#8211; crisp, clean and full of peach and pear notes with a lovely minerality and without the oak that had created the term, ABC \u2013 anything but chardonnay.\u00a0 It\u2019s a wine we both remember to this date. But a great wine isn\u2019t just the flavour it\u2019s who you share it with and the location could not have been any better. The lady was to be my future wife in just five months.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We finished the wine, got on our push bikes and gingerly made it back to our youth hostel, avoiding the large tourist coaches that seemed to be swerving into us, or was it the other way round.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was many years later when we had twins and settled back in Manchester when I came across a bottle in The Cheshire Smokehouse. We enjoyed it that night on the first sip, like a re-run of a movie playing before our eyes, playing Boyz II Men, End Of The Road, and savouring every drop and memory.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This was the beginning of my love affair with wine, taking my WSET3 in Manchester and eventually using my wine making knowledge in running an award winning spirits distillery in North Manchester \u2013 Defiance Spirits. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Defiance Spirits&#8217; owner Paul Sheerin has the fondest of memories of an Australian chardonnay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":2121639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120901],"coauthors":[65],"class_list":["post-2121638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wine-club"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized 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