Poinsettias and cherry gingerbread on the nose along with the slightest bit of caramelized onion. Very brown and red.
Ghostly tannins from the bottle age. Why must Burgundy be so expensive? $28 just to get started. Probably because there is nothing else like this in wine.
Note to self: Bring a bottle to the pie party. Remember to wear pants.
Grenace, Syrah, and Merlot… the Merlot is the only reason that this isn’t labeled as $30 Gigondas. Only ~1,000 cases are made, and this comes from the “best Rhone vintage ever” so good luck trying to find some.
What it gives us more than anything is that, even using prohibited grapes… even paying only $15… and even only letting the bottle breathe from 30 minutes… and especially even only drinking it a year and a half after the grapes are picked (the other Gigondas I bought today is from 1995 to put into perspective just how long these wines should age), this is a pretty darn great bottle of wine.
Yes, there is a slightly grapey quality to it, but there is also a wet granite feel to the nose and an almost rotten strawberry mid-palate. The Merlot lets the wine be drunk a decade or so sooner than classic Gigondas, and it made both this wine yummy right now in 2009 and the French government very upset… real Gigondas does NOT have Merlot in it! *gasp*.
I feel like in a few years the nut skin finish on this along with the deep sugary fruits of the mid-palate, will combine to become a really interesting amber/sappy (not like some lame Slow News Day ending to a 5th season West Wing episode) amalgamation of fruit, baking spices, and deciduous forest scents.
Right now though it’s just a really well-made bottle of wine.
PS. Serve this blind to your friends who drink “anything but Merlot” to remind that them Merlot is one of the noblest grapes on the planet… just ask the good people of Bordeaux.
I can’t in good conscience tell you how much I paid for this bottle of wine. To an above-average wine buyer, this wine would not be worth the time it would take to drink it. Why?
It’s actually kind of fantastic though. It has a strong nose… much stronger than a bunch of the fancy Napa wines I’ve been tasting in my quest to find a California Pinot I can really love. Its aroma is floral, meaty, and brown. Actually, it tastes like what I wanted to have for breakfast today: oatmeal covered in brown sugar, three strips of chewy bacon, a handful of dried cranberries, all covered by a mound of crocuses, violets, and hyacinths (yes, I googled “hyacinth” to make sure it was what I was talking about!).
Fleurie is a Cru appelation of Beaujolais that translates as “Flowers” and is supposed to smell as it is named so congratulations to this bottle for coming through on that. Beaujolais in general, too, is not supposed to age so this bottle defies some expectations there (and a huge round of applause to the brown sugar/bacon scent it has taken on in its old age… I hope to smell half as good in twelve years!). Also, George Duboeuf, for all the crappy BJ Nouveau he has made, has probably spilled more perfect wine than you and I will ever drink so let’s not forget that he can find some really special bottles when he tries (at all).