Last week, the boyfriend and I traveled to Montana to visit my parents. It was a super fun trip, but I didn't get the chance to drink any wine. We did try a out a great brewery: Madison River Brewing in Belgrade, MT - go if you ever get a chance!
While we were visiting, my mother gave me a couple of bottles of wine she received as gifts a few years ago. They had been sitting in the back of her closet forever and she couldn't remember who gave them to her. My mother doesn't drink much or particularly like wine, so I was blessed (aka cursed) with the gift of wine of questionable origin.
Also gifted to me this week was a huge wine glass from my coworker. I'm pretty sure I could fit an entire bottle of wine it, but I wasn't about to do that with the two bottles from my mother. Seriously, these were bottles I wasn't sure I even wanted to open. But in the spirit of education, I bit the bullet.
The wine on the left is a Beaujolais Nouveau from 2010 by Georges Duboeuf. The deal with Beaujolais Nouveaus is that they are meant to be drank right away.....so I tried it about 5 years too late. These are red wines from the Beaujolais region in France and made from the Gamay grape. They are bottled after a short period of fermentation. It used to be a big deal - I can't tell if it is anymore. Its released on the third Thursday of November and in America it is marketed as a wine for Thanksgiving. I'm not sure I want to invite this guy to the table though.
So what does a wine that was meant to be drunk at Thanksgiving 2010 taste like when drunk in September 2015? Fucking awful is what it tastes like!! It smelled like cough syrup and tasted worse. I can't even describe the flavor beyond pure awfulness. I took one sip and the rest went down the drain.
The wine on the right is a 2009 Cabernet Franc by Lazy Bones. Searching for Lazy Bones revealed nothing about the company that produced it. It appears to be sold at Trader Joes and has had mixed reviews over the years. I did eventually find the company that owns it, but they are a bottling/storage company in California that services many different wineries. I'm not sure how that leads to the production of this wine.
Cabernet Franc is mostly used in red blends such as Bordeaux and Meritage. It's rarely sold as a single varietal. It's actually a parent grape of Cabernet Sauvignon. So knowing that this grape is not really great by itself and that there is no information about the winemaker for it, I did not have high hopes. That....and my mom found it in her closet.
After pouring, I smelled it: cherries, brown sugar and wood. It smelled pretty good, so I had some hope. But that was quickly dashed by tasting. It was like a sudden bright note of generic fruit and then nothing but the taste of alcohol. This bottle should have been drank years ago. Two sips and the rest was poured out. The best part of the night was watching the first James Bond movie, Dr. No.
I think this was definitely a lesson in doing some research into wine you would like to buy, just bought or received as a gift.
So after that awful awful experience, let's finish up our grape of the month: Pinto Gris/Grigio.
If you remember from earlier, I want to find a variety of wines made from this grape that would showcase the different styles you can find around the world. I managed to find a very nice fruit-forward one from California (Estancia) and a fun, mouth-puckering, full of minerality one from Italy (Tiefenbrunner). However, I didn't quite land on one that shows off how they do it in France. My local wine store has a few from Alsace, but all at price point I don't really want to pay.
I received some good advice from a forum community I'm joined - they advised I look at Oregon, specifically the Willamette Valley. So I bought a Pinot Gris from the A to Z Winery. At $13, this is an amazing wine!! The winery uses grapes from many different vineyards to capture a ton of different flavors and smells.
There was a lot to smell and taste with this wine and I definitely did not pick up everything. As the wine warms up, the scents and tastes will change, which was super fun to experience. My favorite was probably the honey notes that came out as the wine warmed up. This is definitely way different than the Estancia or Tiefenbrunner, which are much less complex wines. I would recommend bringing this to your next dinner party!
In the end, I'm glad I picked Pinot Gris as the first grape. It changes drastically depending on where its grown and I managed to find some good examples of that for less than $15. So, dear Reader, go out and pick some others - report back what you found!
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