2004 Trio Red - Spain meets twist on French varieties

This little $13 bottle of wine is a definite winner in it's price category. I opened it up yesterday evening to make a little red wine sauce for my steak and then proceeded to drink the rest of the bottle along with my dinner guest. The blend of Syrah-Tempranillo-Cabernet Sauvignon gives this wine enough structure to hold it's own even with a meat based dinner but at the same time, it isn't a wine that is too demanding on the palate as far as complexity is concerned. Despite this, I did enjoy it's straightforward fruit, slight hints of leather and game, decent medium tannin, and low-medium body. It is a great easy drinking and enjoyable wine if being enjoyed by the glass. Even after using just over a glass for the sauce, we had a hard time enjoying the entirety of the bottle between two of us.
The wonderful thing about this wine, and Spanish wine in general, is the age. The legal ageing system in Spain means that it is easy for producers to hold on to their wines a little longer to give them that little something extra. The other great thing about that is that you end up with a decent wine with age on it for a really great price! As a comparison, most 2004 French wines, even the most basic, would likely be priced far above this little trio. I have seen some 10 year old Spanish wines of great quality and complexity coming onto the market at around $40. Unheard of from most other countries! Spain is a great region to keep in mind if looking for a wine with a bit of age but without the price tag imposed by most other countries.

This wine isn't a bad wine by any means, and especially for the price it gives a lot of itself. It is the perfect wine if you'll only be having a glass or two or to serve either at the beginning as a food friendly starter wine.
Price meets value and quality rating: this wine gets a solid B from me.

cono sur Cabernet Sauvignon/Carmenere

I absolutely adore this wine, and this grape blend of Carmenere and Cabernet Sauvignon for that matter. I like it so much that I've sent people away from my store to go to another store to get it if I think it's exactly the kind of wine they're looking for. It is a wine that is worth that extra little trek and I hope you'll all have a chance to try it as well. I've reviewed another wine that is a blend of these two grapes in one of my first posts - the Mapu by Baron Phillipe de Rothschild.
Carmenere is a grape originally from Bordeaux that unfortunately never really took root in the region after the phylloxera epidemic of the late 19th century. Luckily it had already been introduced to the soils of Chile and here the grape variety has really come into it's own to make some fantastic varietal and blended wines. It's the magical combination of Carmenere and Cabernet Sauvignon that still gets me however and I'm happy to see that more and more wine makers are coming on board make more of this blend.
This wine is full of cherries and blackberries, ripe fruit, earth, chocolate and some typical Chilean green/vegetal notes on both the nose and the palate. It has a big structure generally expected from a Cabernet Sauvignon but it's nicely mellowed by the Carmenere, a little like a Merlot helps to soften Cabernet based Bordeaux blends. Together, Cabernet Sauvignon and Carmenere merge to make an enjoyably smomoth, not overly tannic but still full-bodied enough to stand it's ground with red meats and heavier food thanks to the Cabernet component. It's also a great wine to enjoy on it's own, which is how I usually have it.

In general, I give this blend a solid A rating, especially since they usually come in at under $20. Some are better than others, but few are bad. If you want a perfect wine to bring to a dinner party where you don't know what's being served, this wine is a great choice! Enjoyable in every way. I hope you enjoy it too!

Carchelo 2008, round 2

Originally I told you all that I really didn't enjoy this wine. I found it manufactured and fake and overly fruity and oaky and over all really unbalanced. Well, that's still true, but I always like to give wine (and winemakers) the benefit of the doubt and try wines again a day or two after to see how they've opened up. This one was just as bad the second time around as it was the first time I tried it. I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone when I tried it this second time and he suggested that since it tasted so manufactured, it might go well with manufactured food....so, at 11pm I decided to take a little walk to my local McDonalds's for a cheeseburger. I would be hard pressed if I had to come up with any food that's more manufactured than good ol' MikeyD's. Now the problem with going to mcd's at 11pm in North Vancouver is that the walk in part is closed...which means I'm left with the drive thru. I don't have a car because I just don't need one and it would seem that for some reason they don't allow walk-thru's in the drive-thru. I even had the window shut on me when I tried to reason!! Thankfully my lucky car arrived after not too long a wait to save me from the non-walk-thru McDonalds and was kind enough to procure this food item for my experiment. So thank you kind samaritan! Your good deed helped to forward progress in the food and wine world and for that we will be eternally grateful :D
Sadly, however the burger and the wine formed a deplorable pair and I'll have to be reminded to only try this experiment again under controlled circumstances. It made the wine somewhat more palatable but it just wasn't strong enough to hold it's own against it. Maybe a thick rare steak with no extra marinade flavours might have worked, but even with that, I can think of a lot of other wines to pair with that dish that would make it way more enjoyable.

This wine still fails is my conclusion.

Carchelo 2008, Jumilla Spain (#8)

Well, it seems we've reached a benchmark here today; I have a wine with me that I don't like. It's from Spain, which makes me think I'd like it, but it has a cool bottle and for me that's always a red flag telling me that some marketing genius is trying to sell these wines to unassuming consumers and what's in the bottle may not be great. Now we get the question of what is a good wine and the answer varies for absolutely everyone. I enjoy wines that express terroir, the sense of the place and really show me what the grape is made of but not everyone does and this wine, like many other that I don't like have been known to be extremely popular with people in general. So if you like this type of wine, big fruit filled with new oak, then this wine is for you. I find it's fairly reminiscent of Big Australian Reds.

Jumilla is an interesting area in Spain because it resisted the phylloxera outbreak that devastated vineyards all over Europe in the 19th century. It continued to make it's traditional wines under traditional circumstances until it was unexpectedly hit by the bug in 1989. While replanting it's vines on grafted American root stock, many wine makers in the area used this opportunity to update their machinery and wine making techniques. Hence, now most of the area's wineries are fully modernized and have adopted many of the new world techniques which some critics say takes away from the terroir of the wine.

The Bodegas Carchelo 'Carchelo' 2008 from Jumilla, Spain
40% Monastrell (also known as Mourvedre), 40% Tempranillo, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon.
To be honest, I really taste the Cab here. I'm getting deep red fruits and red berries (cherries, raspberries) on the nose with some hints of oak like vanilla and some coffee. This wine has apparently only spent 2 months aging in new french oak barrels but I'm guessing it comes out more strongly because of the warmer climate.

I taste some summer berries and a lot of oak. The tannins to be seem somewhat off balance but they aren't too strong which is nice. My friend and colleague likened the taste to grape jolly ranchers (with oak and cedar) and this wine definitely has that fake candied sweetness to it. I also feel like the acid is somewhat off, as if it's been toyed with in the winery. But again, that's just my view and as I said earlier, it reminds me a lot of big Australian reds so if those are the wines you like then you might just enjoy this one.

This wine however, as far as I know is not available in Ontario, and is not available in BC Liquor stores. Marquis Wine Cellars have it for $18.00 a bottle and I found out today that they only have a few cases left. To this information I say good riddance. I'm happy to see you out the door Bodegas Carchelo 2008 and you've almost scared me away from trying other Jumilla wines. Luckily for Jumilla I'll try just about anything so they stand a chance and if there's something good in the region, I hope to find it!

Adios!

My new untitled wine blog (#1)

How exciting! I finally have my very own wine blog where I can tell the world (or anyone who will listen) all about the wines I love. I really want to focus on $20 or under wines so that my friends and the bulk of the population can enjoy them along with me. I will have none of that pretentious mentality which states that in order for a wine to be good, it has to be expensive. I've had some great wines for under $20 and have recomended many of them to friends who have enjoyed them just as much as I did. Hence the idea of a blog that talks about wines that are accessible to almost everyone.

Now I do have a little problem with this blog and that is that I don't have a name for it. I've asked around but I haven't yet heard any suggestions that I really like. So in order to solve this little problem of namelessness, I'd like to open up the naming of the blog to my friends and possibly also friends of friends reading this post. Let the naming contest begin!!
Also, I'm sure I'll always be looking for ways to make this blog better so any improvement ideas or suggestions will be welcomed.

Now for my first wine, I'd like to write about a wine that gets high praise everytime i recommend it to someone (or as has happened, people i recommend it to then go on and recommend it to someone else). It is a wine that sells for $9.95 in the BC Liquor Store and in my opinion, for 10 bucks, you can't get a better deal. The wine is called Mapu and it's a chilean blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Carmenere. The wine is a Chilean venture by Baron Philip de Rothschild, the owner of a first growth chateau in Bordeaux which is a top wine producing region in France. In Bordeaux, Chateau Mouton-Rothschild is a top rate wine and the Baron's venture with Robert Mondavi in California, Opus One, is also a highly rated wine and as such is fairly expensive. But this chilean wine tastes like if it was made with the same care and dedication as the much more expensive french and californian wines but like chilean wines in general, it sells for much less.
The grape variety of Carmenere has built itself a reputation in Chile. While originally from France, it has thrived in the Chilean climate and makes some great varietal (100% carmenere) wines as well as some great blends, such as this Cabernet Sauvignon/Carmenere wine. The wine is a deep ruby colour and imparts a prominent nose of red berries such as fresh raspberries and cherries. There are also some toasted oak and chocolate smells and a slight medicinal or eucalyptus smell common to chilean wines. On the palate this wine is extraodinary. It has medium tannis and medium body and is extremely well balanced making this wine a joy to drink. The flavours in the mouth are of fruits such as raspberries and cherries as well as chocolate. My first impression of this wine when i tasted it was of chocolate covered cherries. Yum! This wine sits well in the glass and evolves nicely when exposed to air. The finish isn't too long and the wine itself isn't what some people would call complex but for $10, it's an absolutely fantastic wine.
Give it a try and see for yourself why I give this wine an 'A' grade and recommend it without hesitation to anyone who will listen to me :D