Vinicultured: A Wine Blog

While waiting for my dinner to cook (just some spaghetti, pre-made alfredo sauce, and a frozen seafood mix from Trader Joe’s) I’d like to write about YESTERDAY’s dinner: filet mignon served with steamed fingerling potatoes tossed with leeks and goat cheese.  To wash this down was a fair amount of the 2001 Arrowood “Le Beau Melange” Syrah from Sonoma Valley.  Altogether, a great meal.

The impetus for this meal was a half-marathon Alex ran the previous day–the National Half-Marathon–as practice for the true full marathon he was planning on running in early May.  He did very well, coming in I believe 74th out of hundreds if not thousands.

The wine was to help celebrate; the steak was to help him recuperate.

True to form, Alex and I had a bit of the Arrowood before dinner–it got us crunk.  At 15% alcohol, this one was a heavy hitter.  However, it didn’t taste hot, nor was it too big and bold for our tastes.  It reminded me of one of my favorite wines–the Chateauneuf-du-Pape from Domaine La Roquete.  However, THAT wine, being from Southern France, was made primarily of grenache, while the Arrowood was composed of syrah.  It felt more like a “French” wine–apparently, too, Le Beau Melange is Arrowood’s Rhone-style offering.  It succeeds despite the higher alcohol content.  Australian shiraz it ain’t.

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Just a short note on the wine I mentioned the other day, the 2006 Philippe Jouan Bourgogne-Passetoutgrain.  As stated in that previous post, this wine hails from a subappellation of Bourgogne (Burgundy) and is made from at least 1/3 pinot noir and at most 2/3 gamay.  I am assuming that this particular example is made more or less from those two grapes in that proportion.

I opened the bottle yesterday for dinner, which was completely Trader Joes: spinach and ricotta ravioli with tomato sauce, and vegetable pizza supplemented with goat cheese.  Good dinner, and I bet that the wine–which was described as acidic–would go well with the tomato sauces and cheeses.

Transparent purple color, with a promising nose which smelled like a Cotes-du-Rhone, actually–but my roommate and I found the wine a bit too insubstantial, too acidic.  Some cherry and minerality, but there was no heft.  It was like a pretty girl with no substance behind her smile.  It wasn’t a bad wine, just perhaps a touch too acidic.

Not to write it off too soon, I corked the bottle and put it in the fridge to see if a day to “breath” would round out the wine.  Now I’m drinking it with some more pizza–straight-up cheese–and it’s still acidic but a bit more open.  I noticed a little tinniness on the (short) finish I hadn’t noticed before.  Good with the pizza, actually, and better than what Clive Coates, MW described:

“A blend of Gamay and Pinot Noir might promise to be barely drinkable.  In practise as this wine is largely from grapes which barely ripen in the coolest parts of the  Burgundy vineyards the results are usually worse.  Someone must like it, for the amount produced each year is not negligible.”

from An Encyclopedia of the Wines and Domaines of France

The coolness leading to the low ripeness must lead to the wine’s low alcohol and light body.  Though more pleasurable than Mr. Coates warned, I would probably not buy this wine again.