Diamond - Still Medium product reviews

Celestial Wines are absolutely delicious. I first discovered them at a local Winter Show and now any time we have a big expo or show at Claudlands Event Centre, I always seek them out. They are great boutique wines, and their guy is so knowledgeable.

My main reason for liking Celestial Wines is because of their huge range of different fruit flavours. You can get a grape wine just about anywhere. However, you can not just pick up a Diamond wine like this anywhere and that's a great point of difference for them in the grape wine variety.

A Diamond wine is like nothing you have quite experienced. It is sweet, and you truly taste the grape. Its like biting into a grape and experiencing the pulp, the skin, everything. But its not overpoweringly sweet like a grape juice. I love it for special occasions, definitely too nice to just guzzle.

I can be a really picky wine drinker at times, and this time was certain one of those. So it was really nice to have a wine I could not only recognise, but also thoroughly enjoy.

'Diamond' is a grape wine, unlike the majority of Celestial's cellar, so it has a lot of familiarity to it. A pleasant wine, this one actually tastes like grapes... and by that, I mean grape flavours that take you back to your youthful days of eating 'grape-flavoured lollies' or stuffing handfuls of grapes into your mouth right off the vine... summertime at it's finest!

This wine is a great one to use in summer drinks, and can easily be matched by sparkling grape juice for the kids, so they can have drinks that taste just the same, but without the buzz of booze. Personally, I swiped a bit of this wine for myself to trial a few ideas, and using it in a fruit sorbet recipe I found online was just brilliant!*

Overall, this was my favourite wine of the night, and I just can't wait to get more of it!

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* This recipe was seen on "Cool Kids Cooking" on TVNZ... all credit to them for it.

1 x can of peaches, drained
1 x can of pears, drained
1/4 cup runny honey
2/3 cup of sparkling apple juice (or in this case, Celestial Wines Diamond, or sparkling grape juice for a kiddies version)

Blend all in food processor or in batches in a Magic Bullet, until smooth.

Freeze for 3 hours, stirring well every 1/2 hour to keep the ice crystals small.

After that, freeze for 4 hours undisturbed.

Scoop and serve with sliced fruit. Strawberries go very well with it.

This was a really stunning wine. I wasn't able to make it to the wine tasting night but was lucky enough to get a sneak shot at this wine the night before. It was a really smooth wine with an awesome real-grape flavour that surprised me. I had sipped many a wine and none of them tasted like grapes but this one sure did and it really impressed me.
TYhis wine would go down well as a summer night drink, well chilled, or even as a mixer with some fruit juice to tone it down for 'cheap dates' so that they could enjoy it longer.
I think the price is good, but a little steep for a basic wine even at 11% alcohol. The price is higher than I would happily pay because it is a boutique wine, made in small batches from limited stocks of fruit. It would be good to see this one a little cheaper as you can buy a reasonable plonk from the supermarket for about half this price.
All in all, if you want something really intriguing and pleasantly surprising, then this is one wine you should give a try. It just might be the one you have been looking for, and you don't have to cellar it for 5 years to get it at its best!