WTN: White and Red, Italy and Spain

2005 La Giustinina Gavi, Lugarara, 12%: Pale yellow, faint cotton candy nose, maybe some lychee but I'm not exactly sure what lychee smells like. I vaguely recall it from one of those "nose" kits that my parents got me for Christmas; I'll have to go back and sniff the vial and see if I've got it right. Citrus appeared after the initial swirl. I could taste very little fruit in this, it just tasted like...wine. Medium roundness in the mouth, strong acidity and a long, tart finish. Went very nicely w/ the grilled tilapia, squash and pine-nut cous-cous. Left it alone for a couple of days and on day 3 it had a more pronounced candied nose (maybe I'm mistaking candy for some sort of fruit? I don't get the impression that this style of wine should smell candied for some reason). I also noticed more pronounced mineral notes, as well as something vague that I can only describe as crayon. Taste was grapefruit and mineral.

2005 Bodegas Zabrin Garnache de Fuego, 14.5%: Bought this on Bob Parsons recommendation. Deep purple/magenta color w/ glints of ruby. My first impression was very different from Bob's http://www.wineloverspage.com/forum/vil ... ight=fuego

My notes say sweet, oaky nose, slightly candied (what's up w/ all my wines having "candied" notes...must just be me). The biggest difference is that this wine smelled hot to me right off the bat, and my first taste confirmed it. Possibly due to the actual temperature at which this was tasted? I keep my apartment at about 76F, and didn't chill this at all, so perhaps the alcohol seemed stronger to me. I found the tannins to be somewhat in-your-face, and there was a tart acidity following up. I was tasting this without food, so I tried a dab of BBQ sauce, thinking that the heaviness I felt about this wine might benefit, but the sauce completely overwhelmed the wine and made it taste flaccid.

However, over the next hour or so it leveled out, and I finally opened up a bag of that pre-cooked Perdue Italian flavor chicken bits because I have nothing else close to appropriate in my bachelorette pad at this time, and voila...it worked amazingly well and turned this from an "ummm, I don't think so" wine into a "ahhh, just needs the right food" wine.

Sorry for babbling on...should have started eating far earlier