Community Tasting Note

LeifErik wrote:

Thursday, April 24, 2008 - This is an interesting wine being a Non Vintage blend with a release year. Released in 2004, I'm unaware of the blended vintages, but it's already showing the brickish rose color of maturity. On the nose I'm struck first with notes of peppered tangerines and rose petals, then there is an elusive and yet still obvious aroma of sardines dipped in cocoa-soy sauce. Fruits of cassis, charred blackberry bush, and grape soda begin to emerge soon after, all followed by aromas of young cedar plank. In the mouth there is an upfront obvious plummy fruit flavor. The tannins are firm but not aggressive, quite soft really, focusing at first on the mid palate, but with time the oak tannins emerge on the gums. The acid structure is soft and subtle but elongated nicely through really high toned fruit flavors of ranier cherry and citrus zest. This all finishes with a lovely cumin rose finsih. There is no overwhelming minerality here, or persistent typical fruit profiles, but definitely a persistent rose theme, which is of course quite characterisitic of grenache from this area (assuming that of course there is substantial grenache sourced from Rhone territories). The oak influence is a little strong considering the lack of fruit to counter balance it all, and it will probably be a bit light for some, which I don't mind. It is definitely not an extracted wine. However, still a nice wine, and the price is really affordable. It's quite unique and fun to experience a wine of these varietals (grenache/syrah/carignan) that seems as close to maturity right away as this one -- a clever NV blend.

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