From the Cahors region in France, this red drop is made up of
79% Auxerrios
13 % Merlot
8% Tannat
From what I’ve been able to determine in the Cahors region Auxerrios would be known as Malbec in the rest of the world. No idea when its good to drink (or if its way past its best). Am expecting this to be “old world” in style and having raised my palate on new world Shiraz and Cab Sauv’s from the Barossa, McLaren Vale and Coonawarra in South Australia not sure that my palate would be able to tell the difference.
Colour - Clear dusky red tending slightly to brown.
Nose - Very soft and subtle - I can pick the alcohol in it, but there are other scents there - having trouble separating them out. The cherries from a blackforest cake are there on a bed of forest floor, perhaps a little cold cooked cabbage?
Taste - Dusty tannins, a little sour - unsure if this is meaning the wine has gone bad or if it’s the way it’s supposed to be. I’m getting some uncooked cauliflower juice coming through. The sourness almost makes me think of vinegar, but its not throughout the profile from start to finish and the wine seems integrated with initial tastes flowing on to secondary, tertiary and then the finish, which is a bit short but the journey is smooth and flowing from one part to the next.
Fruity nose - hard to pin down - its definitely sweet hints of liquorice even a little menthol (think fishermans friend). Colour is deep red/purple in hue fading to hints of brown on the rim of the glass.
Initial peppery spice on the palate followed up by nice clean red dirt (thinking edge of scrub/fruit block in Winkie) heading off into fruit - almost too much dark berries and grape juice, bordering on fake, tail end is acidic combined with tannins, wonderful mouth feel, perhaps a little bitter (but I love bitters so for me this is just right).
Hailing from Italy this primativo has an interesting colour - not particularly intense - somewhere near ruby in colour, with a dash of red delicious - you can see your fingers through it in a tilted glass.\
The nose has hints of dark berries, overlaid on a subtle forest floor with a new road running through it.
On the mouth the tannins and wood overpower this wine, but its relatively well integrated into a medium finish. I suspect that it will drink quite well with a little more time in the decanter.
Well some time (45 minutes) has now passed, and I have had dinner - the food has shifted my palate somewhat and the tannins and wood are not so overpowering, there is a little fruit, but that is on the initial hit, mid-late palate has a vegeital action going on, which then shifts through to a leather cigar case with the tannins rounding out the finish - to be honest I’d like them to be a bit stickier, but I am definitely enjoying this wine.
Inky purple/red in colour a nose that is dominated by the 14.5% alcohol content, very subtle black currant beneath that sitting on top of very faint asphalt. Weird nose. Tempted to leave it and give it more air and hope it develops over time, then again, I also want to hook into it and try some ;).
Hook in option selected… dominated by oak, lots and lots and lots of oak with a hint of sulphur, finish is a fruit, but unsure which - almost over old, under ripened apples or peacharines, certainly not very pleasant at the moment, will revisit in an hour or so and see how it fares then.
It did improve with a little time - a very tannic alcoholic wine with too much oak to be enjoyable. I can’t say I’d rate it very highly even after a little time. Many much better wines out there. Only check it out for a try.
This wine (65% Grenache, 25% Mataro and 10% Shiraz) had a fairly alcoholic fruity nose - nothing of much note - perhaps dried apricot. The taste on the mouth was pretty much just tannin’s and dried fruit (apricot slabs). Not integrated, not balanced, not drinkable. Left for several hours to see if it would improve unfortunately it did not. I’d rate this one a MASSIVE pass. Perhaps I’d try it again in 18-36 months, but am not holding out much hope.
Nose: Hints of lemon zest on light toast with subtle yeasty notes.
On the mouth - initial explosion of fine to medium bubble, followed quickly with a yeasty flavour that is almost instantly replaced by acid and a nice sharp finish.
If you’ve experienced the pain of a screwed up page (formatting) after embedding a youtube video - try the page here, very, very helpful! The above saved my site - it took forever to work out why the formatting went all fubar. The code supplied by youtube out of the box does not work well with Wordpress and Firefox, most of this is related to changes introduced by the wordpress graphical editor. However, a few simple changes, removing of the “embed” tags and life is once again happy and videos, embeddable and viewable by the important browsers.
Sorry - have not worked out how to cleanly embed video in wordpress - will hopefully work it out soon enough.Nuff saidNormally embedding the code provided by youtube screws up formatting, lets see if this works
Are you a geek? If so, would you consider yourself an oenophile (wine lover/wine fan)?
Having read a blog post that suggests that geeks love to get the core of problems, to discover the key to “problems” or otherwise get to the heart of anything that they enjoy doing (games, puzzles etal). I’d have to say that when it comes to my wine, of late I have been getting into it to “work it all out” and understand whats going on. When I first got into wine, I just looked for ones I liked - starting w/ Shiraz’s and Cabernet Sauvignon’s.
Recently however I’ve begun to explore the concept that perhaps there is more to wines than just the surface scratching I was doing initially - you could pretty much guarantee that I would ignore any white if there was a red about, now, I’m not so sure - I enjoy wines not only for the pleasure experienced drinking them (specifically w/ good people and good conversatoin) but for the deeper aspects related to them - the smells and tastes, I’ve begun picking apart wines and associating varietal based on the components that make up the smells and flavours, grouping varietals together in a “class” ie: Petit Verdot lives up with the Cab Sauv’s and Shiraz’s in a different “class” to Pinot Noir, based on all these flavour and smell profiles. This has led to me *trying* pretty much any wine I come across - to build up a bigger experience library of such smells and flavours regardless of varietal or even colour. This is something that makes me pretty happy - and also brings to mind a realisation when it comes to wine - it’s beyond unlikely that you could get bored/work it all out! Give it a go though.
So - the point of todays post - of the Geeks out there who are oenophile’s I suspect this will be one hobby/experience that you won’t be able to tire of, because every vintage is different, there are many many places you can get wines from and all the things that go into making a wine - good luck working it all out and getting bored!
For non-geeks out there - you may not take pleasure in trying to work everything out - but try every wine you can get your hands on, read things about wines, but above all - don’t be swayed by other peoples opinions - only you can know what you like!
