Happy Monday...
This is "Oops." Or perhaps, being France, it is "Hoops." No one will ever know. But given the context, I'm going with Oops. Oops has a friend, Mistral, named after the blustery winds that sweep down from the Alpine reaches to scour this rocky soil. But Oops was the friendly one, who seemed eager to greet us as we toured the famed Chateau de Beaucastel in the southern Rhone region of Chateauneuf du Pape. The fence, by the way, was not for him, but a construction fence for the massive improvements being done to the property. Apparently puppers do not require hard hats. Others do.
The family Perrin has held this property since the early 1900's, and has not only helped to define (literally) the region of Chateauneuf, but indeed, the entirety of this larger Southern Rhone area. No, they aren't the only larger concern here, and I'm sure many of you have sampled wines from their competition, but at least for me, none of them is capable of crafting in each bottle, something that tastes, smells, and indeed, feels, like small-production, lovingly crafted wine that I often only experience at tiny houses. How do they do it? Well, even after seeing a small part of the works, I kinda' don't know...I mean, it's really extraordinary how even our Wine of the Week, a "simple" Cotes du Rhone Village, can transport one straight to the windswept vistas, replete with puppies.
One interesting note: Large or small, the winemakers I visited were all using the knowledge of our forefathers to grow better grapes. Indeed, in a time when Mother Nature is threatening their ways of life, these men and women are trying to work with her, not against, finding the harmony of the life-cycle to be an innate part of their efforts. A great example is the Bats of Beaucastel. They are planting trees of various types in a grid, 7 meters by 12 meters, throughout their property...and why? Bats! Each spring there are fluttery fiends (moths and butterflies) who come eat the foliage of the vines...shall we spray them with chemicals? No! We shall feed our nocturnal allies. So simple, so almost obvious that it seems embarrassing that we have, for so long, relied on harmful treatments for not just wine, but so much of our regular food regimen. Just, umm...food for thought. Bats!
Current regular hours: Monday-Saturday 10am-6pm, Sunday 12-4.
|
|
Please visit our website: www.bangorwineandcheese.com |
|
Don't forget to catch Eric each Tuesday at 4:40pm on Downtown with Rich Kimball on WZON AM 620. Downtown airs weekdays from 4-6pm. |
|
Famille Perrin
Cotes du Rhone Villages
There's a lot of confusion over what makes a certain wine "a certain wine." Take one of the most famed, requested, and generally agreeable wines on the planet...the Red wine called Cotes du Rhone. Yes, there are whites and roses. Not discussing those now.
Now, CdR literally translates into "hillsides of the Rhone" and means, more or less, that it is a red from any of thousands of hectares in a swath of the Rhone River Valley (mostly most most in the Southern part of it around the famed regions where Grenache is the predominant grape.) But it can be so much more, or less, because caught up in the mix are actual hillsides, some of which face an optimal direction, and some not, and some flat fields that are likely more fertile than the Octamom, and some that are truly poor soil that makes the vines crawl down in search of the water table. And everything in between.
And then there's this "village" level thingy. What's with that? I pay more for an extra word? Sorta. Village level wine came from a period in the late 60's when several, follow me here, "villages" that made "better wine" than the flatland schlock, came together and petitioned to have these acres set aside, legally, as better wine-producing areas. Since then, some you probably know about have been granted even "higher-level" status as individually named villages: Gigondas, Cairanne, Vaqueyras, and one of the newer, Vinsobres. But there are Cotes du Rhone vineyards everywhere, not so with the Village level. And the alcohol must be at a certain level, and the blend dictated by law. So you're ending up with what growers in the area consider an optimum expression of the land, bursting with character, and not just fruity fruit fruit.
This, the efforts of the esteemed Perrin family, really does capture the better elements of this soil nicely. Soft tannin, deep nose of garrigue and dark berry fruit...it is a tremendous accompaniment to a hearty meal (did ours with my mother-in-law's cannelloni on Saturday!) This is, if you will, the Southern Rhone's calling card...as if to say: this is what I am, this is what you can expect. Dignity, class, but with a touch of casual, rough around the edges swagger. All under 15 bucks. Yeah.
|
|
Famille Perrin Cotes du Rhone Villages
W.O.W. Price: $13.49
|
|
Bangor Wine And Cheese
86 Hammond Street,
Bangor, ME 04401
(207) 942 3338
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
