This Thursday Jack graced the Herald offices with Stella Rose Tropical Mango, a flavored wine. The bottle, a twist-off, was $14.99 at Zachary’s on Elm. We’re normally a beer review, but, the Well pours wine on tap and I (Thea) like wine better than beer, so we’re expanding the range of this column.
This fragrant, bubbly concoction smells not of the tropics, or mango, or even wine. It smells more like a Yankee Candle shop—intriguing if nothing else.
Stella Rose, an Italian brand boasting a hundred years of history, graces each bottle with its proprietary “Sweet Level” gauge. This fine, mango mash, scores a 6/10, or “semi-sweet.” That is a lie. This shit is sweet as fuck. Like unbearably. Perhaps if we had followed its recommendation to “serve chilled,” the sweetness would have been offset by the chill. We served it just slightly below room temperature, so I guess we’ll never know.
After the immediate synthetic sugary syrup taste, we got notes of peach followed by an artificial mango aftertaste. An after-aftertaste revealed a more realistic, bitter mango flavor. With a quick Google search we discovered the enzymes in our saliva that break down sugar also produce malic acid, which tastes sour. This wine has enough sugar to trigger this process, apparently.
Jack complained that Stella Rose only denotes its “low alcohol” content on its “bib”—a paper sign hanging around the bottle’s neck—so, “if you’re trying to get fucked up you might be misled.” Especially because you won’t be able to have very much of it. We aren’t even tipsy yet, but the high sugar content is already giving us headaches. This portends a poor drunk/hangover ratio. Drink with care.
3/10
