I have been on a mission to find some new daily drinkers lately, and I picked up a Corbieres called Domaine Sainte Eugenie, La Reserve (2006) for about $13. It is made from Carignan, Grenache and Syrah, is medium bodied with nice acidity, plum and red cherry flavors and has a medium finish. It even has a nice nose and texture. I doubt that it will age well (not that I intend to perform that experiment), but it is well made, balanced, and very food friendly – light enough to compliment chicken and some fish, but flavorful enough to serve with burgers, pizza, or grilled meat.
Nobody will confuse this with a classic CDP. It is what it is: A delightful, flavorful, well-made, versatile wine I can drink without caring what day of the week it is. Nice QPR.
Love them, we demolished a couple of pallets of this one a while back when the importer couldn’t seem to move any and made us a deal:
Garrigue? Check! Terroir? Check! 50% Discount? Check! Just add Ratatouille…
Dating from 1911, this estate is tiny (less than 100 acres) and was the pampered pet project of Marie Helene Gau, a psychologist who is crazy about wine and history since the early Seventies when she bought the property, cut the yields in half to promote quality and built a winery that incoporates the lessons of history with those innovations she found improved the wines. Current proprietor Robert Baudoin bought the estate in 2000 and continues the legacy of Madame Gau. The vines (40% Syrah, 30% each of Grenache and Carignan) are dry farmed on the steep hillsides leading up to the Pyranees and the result is a wine lighter in body thtn the Donos (but with plenty of acidity to deal with tomato dishes or even red saus BBQ) and a more pronounce perfume of roses and the local wild flowers and herbs know as La Garrigue. 50 cases only at this price.
Chateau Helene Corbieres Penelope 2003, Languedoc France just $6.99 while it lasts!
That stuff would be a good deal at the normal price, keep an eye out.
This one was a bit more serious but still did not sell through and got remaindered:
Château Donos Corbières Réserve
Cuvée Gomezinde the First 2003, Languedoc $15.99
A competitor of ours offered this wine three years ago at $17.99 and enforced a 6 bottle limit as that was such a good deal THEN that they feared there would not be enough to go around. We’ve just liberated the last thirty cases or so from the importer in a deal that allows us to bring it to you for LESS and with no limits (while they last). This is a very large estate (350 hectares) with that lovely castle dating back to the time of Charlemagne as its centerpiece and is a wonderful place to spend some time if you are ever in the area. They also have a small plot (8 hectares) of old vine Syrah (95%) and Mourvedre (5%) growing on hillside terraces to produce this deep, dark, meaty and spicy red that will be just fabulous with anything grilled or generally hearty in nature. And, while it looks expensive, you don’t have to tell anyone it is less than $200 a CASE.
The Domaine de Fonsainte “La Demoiselle” bottling is one of my favorite QPR reds, and their Rosé bottling is very nice too. It’s imported by Kermit Lynch.
WineX carried the 2003 of that same bottle a few years back for the same price. I went through and couple and have one more that I am going to open sometime soon. I remember it being a great value at the time and brought it to a tasting where it impressed.
Love 'em. They’re great little food friendly wines that as RGR said, represent great QPR. Unfortunately, they aren’t as easy to find as they should be.
Having suffered through a Corbieres Death March buying trip in July of 2007, I can explain why they’re not more available: the pricing on most has gone up, and so has the extraction, oak and ripeness levels. I had a hard time wrapping my admittedly Old World palate around many of the wines we tasted. The refrain “Monsieur, 200% new oak” was way too common, and many of these tasted pruney and almost cooked, something that is a hazard in such a warm and dry environment.
That said, I do love well-made Corbieres, but I ended up representing Saint-Chinians and Minervois instead. I did taste some nice Corbieres just recently however, so maybe they’re swinging back to sensible wine-making and pricing. Hopefully.
Well, in a sense those aren’t the wines I’m talking about. Don’t blame you for passing them up Michel. Hate to see things get so corrupted for the sake of pleasing the uneducated American palate.
Similar bad things happening in Cahors. This is from our 2000 Holiday newsletter:
Fighting Globalization in your Glass
“Once you guys succeed in making all wine taste the same, what will you do for a living?” That is the question we have been asking wholesale reps lately as we have been absolutely barraged by the forces of evil (well, severely misguided, focus group driven winemaking and marketing at least): The LA Times does a feature article on how the massively consolidated, technocratic, “we make wines in the winery not the vineyard”, Australian wine industry plans to be making and selling the majority of ALL wines within a decade. An importer proudly presented us with a Parker Beatification Certificate pronouncing that one of his Chiantis “could easily pass for a fine Premier Cru Volnay” (a particularly soft, velvety and UN-CHIANTI-like Burgundy) which we thought was like telling Vince Lombardi that his star linebacker would make a dandy ballerina.
Then, to top it all off, another supplier comes in with two samples alleged to be Cahors (a Southern French red made from Malbec and Tannat that has been famous since Chaucer’s time for being BLACK, tarry, brambly and aggressive, just the thing to go with the local diet of confit of duck, fois gras, lamb cassoulet and such) that have been polluted with enough Merlot (?!?!) and a “huge investment in an ultra modern winery” to make them taste like Wild Vines Blackberry Merlot (which you can buy for $3.99 at Sav-On Drugs if you really need some). I
t seems the consensus amongst the “gatekeepers” is that Americans want wines from all over the world with fanciful names and long histories as long as they all taste the same and don’t have any disconcerting “ethnic” character. So, do we just give up and roll over? NO!!! We continue to champion wines with true personality, regional style (even outright idiosyncrasies) and a point of view and remind those in the supply chain that they are huge crowd favorites at OUR “focus groups” where we offer true diversity instead of merely different brands of the same old things.
We were making short ribs tonight and the braise called for red wine, so I used up half a bottle of a ‘kitchen rack’ country wine, but quite enjoyed the rest of the bottle with my spouse. So I’ll second the endorsement for Kermit Lynch import 2019 Domaine de Fontsainte [Corbieres] which is an earthy, brambly, fennelly blend of mostly carignan with the balance grenache and syrah. Some of the cepage gets wood, and the rest is in cement - the overall 14.5% abv blend is harmonious and suited for consumption when young. For my tastes, as this AOC gets older, sometimes there can be an unappealing leathery note. The wine is not overly fruity, but if one has been raised on this ilk of So. Rhone / Languedoc / Roussillon it’s in line for their flavor profile. Low tannin, balanced acid, and a delightful drink to go with heavily trimmed short ribs, fluffy polenta and blanched broccoli. B+ in my ledger.
I opened a 2018 Ch. de Mattes Sabran ‘Le Viala’ [Corbieres] and consumed it over the prior three nights. It’s a GSM blend, heavy on the mourvedre, clocking in at 14% abv, and offered up as a CNDP clone. For my tastes, it’s too coarse, acidic for that comparison but it’s still a pretty good wine, especially on the first night. For the most part, any of this AOC that makes it all the way to our region are likely to be good, and the NBI import strip is a reliable quality cue. This is an old estate and vineyard, perhaps 300 years in age, and the blend is tank/vat raised, without any wood. Flavors include fennel, plums, herbs and underbrush with lots of acid on a full bodied frame. It would be ok for fans of the Rhone. In my ledger I’d give it a B. I’m not really clear if the Le Viala name is a single vineyard or the name of some cepage.
I had picked up a copper cored 5 ply pan - my first - so decided to try making some chicken Milanese to see if the supposedly smoother heat transfer would improve this dish. Maybe I’m just trying to justify more kitchen metal, but it seemed to be a little better than my usual All Clad. Or that could have been a couple glasses of the chunky Corbieres influencing the perception.
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