Flavour

Oh, in addition to literature, I consumed some of the local products in Belize. Many of them, like the local beer and rum (Traveller’s One Barrel being the finest and of course not available in the US) and fish and chicken, were quite delicious. In the spirit of JBZ’s most recent Tastings review, I offer you the following:

Rendezvous Estates 2004 Chardonnay, Belize. It has been said that anyone can make a decent white wine. After all, you just chill it well and the off flavors disappear. Not so: the flavors of rancid nuts, plastic, and oil permeate this beverage at any temperature, even mixed with soda water or ginger ale. I hope, for the sake of everyone drinking this, that our bottle was just a case of truly disastrous handling, contamination, or heat stroke, but I doubt it.

Mr. P’s Cashew Wine: Cashew Wine is actually made from the cashew apple, the pseudofruit of the cashew tree. Cashews, see, have the fruity outside, then a second layer which is toxic, then the inner nut, which is yummy. The apple can be made into a wine which is just too nasty to drink. But I bought some and tried it. It tastes like a combination of week-old sesame-seed oil, turpentine, and sugar. The really unpardonable factor, however, is that at only 10% alcohol by volume, it can’t justify its off flavors the way cachaza and moonshine do. It’s just plain nasty.