I went to a Gigondas/Vacqueyras tasting at Kenny & Patrick’s recently and thought I’d throw up some notes from the evening in case any of you were interested.
The wine is mostly Grenache blend and is referred to a lot as “The Poor Man’s Chateauneuf du Pape”. Good enough for me as I like Grenache, and I’m poor! For those that aren’t familiar with the name or style, take some time and grab a bottle or 12 the next time you’re shopping. There are some good deals out there- especially if you’re a Grenache or Frenchie fan.
We did a blind tasting again and rated wines on a 100 point scale. The top 3 wines in the night were all $20, and there were a few in the $15 range.
My chicken-scratch scrawled notes:
-would like/prefer any of these with food (as opposed to just coming home for a glass)
-in a straight-up tasting they weren’t distinctive from each other greatly and will probably have a very tight scoring range
-similar characteristics were: slight astringency in the finish, thin but well-structured with good balance – good old-world characteristics
The top 3 (out of 18) were:
2007 Domaine Notre Dame des Pallieres ($20)
2007 Andrieux & Fils ($21)
2007 Domaine Le Couroulu *
*I brought this last one, it’s a Vacqueyras, and was $19 at K&L
I recommend all of them - although I did write down that I prefer them with food a lot more, so take my notes with a grain of salt (or side of lamb)
OTHER STUFF:
Personally, I’m trying to get away from scoring wines I did in the past- I prefer Dave’s method of “recommended” (or not) that he has on his blog.
Last night I opened a sparkling Torrontés and was quite impressed with it. It’s light and sweet. It would go great with dessert, but it was a nice & fresh way to start off some appetizers of cheese and other things. There was just enough acidity to complement the cheese well. I’m a big fan of Torrontés in general and hadn’t heard of a sparkling version. It was an interesting change of pace.
2008 Familia Schroeder “Deseado” Sparkling Torrontes Neuquen Patagonia $15 – recommended
I’ll have some more notes soon, but these were the most interesting standouts for February so far.
“I went to a Gigondas/Vacqueyras tasting at Kenny & Patrick’s recently and thought I’d throw”
I didn’t want to keep reading after “thought I’d throw up’ but stuck with you. Think you could recommend a mild, dry red, not too tannic, low alcohol content? You’d be my hero…
For a weekday? Maybe a Portuguese wine.
For the weekend and a nice meal, maybe Languedoc or some of the specialty calis
What’s the name of a store near you? I’ll look up some names
http://wideworldofwines.com/
Though apparently nothing exists on their webpage. That would be too easy. I got an exceptional Australian cabernet/merlot blend from them (about 7 years ago), but haven’t found one that I liked since. I should go back and insist that they remember which one it was.