24 Days of French wine: Brouilly

I'm time travelling! Woo! (Translation and disclosure: we were tired and wined-out on Tuesday, so we're drinking this bottle a few days late and back-dating the post. I think on Tuesday proper we had leftover baguette and melted Babybel cheese for supper.)

Here we have a red wine from Brouilly. This is another one of those more specific, special-village-within-a-region appellations - the region here being Beaujolais, which is just south of the Burgundy region. Some people lump Beaujolais in with Burgundy, but you're wading into some pretty prickly politics, there.

Back to the wine: this is not a Beaujolais Nouveau.

It is from Brouilly, which is in Beaujolais. And it does use Gamay grapes which are known for not having crazy strong tannins, but I'm emphatically told that it is not the same thing as a Beaujolais Nouveau.

~The details~
Name: Domaine du Côteau Ensoleillé
Year: unlisted
Region: Appellation Brouilly Contrôlée
Grape/Cépage: Gamay
Alcohol: 12.5%
Serving Temp: 15C
Serving ideas: "Salade composée", red meat, charcuterie plate, terrine, paté

What we did: Ham, turkey, and cheese sandwiches. Green salad of baby spinach, beet greens, and arugula/rocket with tomato and jambon cru which is like prosciutto.

Alright, so a "salade composée" is basically like a meal type salad. Meat, fruit, veg, cheese, nuts - stuff like that, usually on a bed of greens. Think things like chicken caesar salad, pasta salad with shrimp and pine nuts, leafy greens with tuna, tomatoes, boiled egg, and blanched green beans. That sort of thing.  That all seems fairly close to our meal choice.

Now, from what I've read about these wines, they're very accessible and pretty good at going with lots of foods because the tannins are so mellow. And they were. The tannins were there, but not very strong at all. Unfortunately, I can't say that I liked the wine itself.

There was nothing else there to balance that pinch of dryness beyond sourness!  Not even "oh, refreshing acidity." Just sour. And I can't say "well, maybe it should have been against something stronger" because I played with some pairings. Still just... sour. And a little bit dry. Sour red wine.

I'm glad we only had a half bottle.