Red Burgundy - Sometimes a special event calls for a special wine

It's time to finally come back to writing this blog. I'm sorry I've been a little MIA for the past 2 or so months. I guess summer made time go by so quickly that I didn't fully realize how much I had been neglecting my posts. Well I'm back and I'm going to write about a wine that I wouldn't normally write about in this blog, a wine that is a little more expensive than my usual under $20 picks. I chose this specific wine because I feel that today, my first post in 2 months, qualifies as a special occasion so I splurged a little. Let's call this under $30 wine a "special occasions pick". For this special occasion I thought a nice little wine from Burgundy might be nice so I chose the 2006 Reserve De la Chevre Noire, Bourgogne AOC, Pinot Noir. Wines from the Pinot Noir grapes are generally pretty expensive and rarely can you find one of quality under $20. They are definitely out there and I'm always on the search for a quality Pinot under 20 but the truth is that thanks to how finicky the grape is to grow, it just doesn't come cheap. Anyway, this basic Burgundy AOC wine is a really enjoyable wine for this evening with it's fresh cherries, reminding me almost of candied fruit and green notes on the nose, light, fruity with sour cherries on the palate. Not too complex a wine but still not overly simple, a nice down the middle wine. In the mouth, it's light and fresh and not too tannic.
It's a great wine to drink on it's own, as most Pinot Noir's are, but it has enough complexity of flavour to stand up to light fare or chicken.
A great pick for a celebration wine and I'd definitely consider getting it again. For $30, I give this wine a solid A-. A great show for a basic Burgundy AOC.

I'll hobnob this wine anyday!

From Dictionary.com: hobnob\HAHB-nahb\ , intransitive verb;
1.To associate familiarly

And this Pinot Noir presents itself with familiarity right from the start. With it's bright brick red colour and clean, black cherry, red fruit and cedar nose and onto a red fruit filled palate it's elegance and charm makes you want to be friends with this wine from the very first sip. It's tannins are strong enough to hold up to many foods but it is so well integrated into the wine that it has the potential for great gastronomic versatility. It went surprisingly well with my avocado, jalapeno and Monterrey jack omelet sandwich. It had a lot more fresh fruit than what I'd have generally expected from something coming out of southern France but I'm really happy about that. It also opens up to more really nice red fruits if given a few extra minutes. The only thing that was a little disappointing in this wine was the first part of the mouthfeel that was almost watery. The wine picked up near the middle and finished off very nicely but just that first moment when it hit the tongue lacked a bit of weight. With food however, or even after the first few sips, this feeling starts to fade and this wine becomes an easy drinking, Sunday afternoon pleasure wine.

Light, easy drinking, versatile, elegant and under $20 bucks. Definitely a wine to go on the do not forget about me list.

Southern France has been coming out with some really great stuff over the past little while, partly due to a huge market, in France and world wide, for French wines that are more than your basic table wines and partly due to lots of investments and improvements in the wine making of the area. This wine promotes itself as a Vin de Pays d'Oc which means that it's slightly above the most basic of French wines (the table wine) and is therefore allowed to mark down the grape varieties in the bottle. Pinot Noir in this case. This region encompasses a good chunk of southern France around the Mediterranean coast from just west of Marseille through to to the Spanish border. The grapes can essentially come from anywhere in this area and what probably happened with this wine is that someone bought a bunch of grapes or grape juice and bottled it under their name, so really as a consumer we don't know exactly where the grapes came from in this vast area. However the juice got in the bottle, something right was done and we ended up with a product that I'd most definitely recommend and drink again.

$17 at a BC Liquor Store near you and $19.35 at my store if you feel like coming to visit! Worth checking out for your next dinner party or your next regular ol' get together.