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.

24 Days of French Wine: Pouilly-Fumé

Time to change it up with a white wine. This is the fairly well known - as in something I'd actually heard of before - Pouilly Fumé. This does not mean it's a smoked wine. The "fumé" refers to the smoky grey bloom that happens on the grapes when they get ripe.

Note: there is also "Pouilly Fuissé" which is a totally different wine from a different region with a different grape. This is not that.

~The details~ 

Name: Le Chasnoy
Year: 2013
Region: Loire Valley
Appellation: Appellation Pouilly-Fumé Contrôlée
Grape/Cépage: Sauvignon (blanc)
Alcohol: 12.5%
Serving Temp: 9-11ºC
Serving ideas: Fish and poultry in sauce
Special notes: Bottled on the property

What we did:  I've been roaming a bunch of wine-pairing-recommendation sites lately instead of just going by the bottle. Finally we decided on a mâche salad with corn, raw beets, smoked trout, and aged chèvre on baguette slices, all drizzled with hazelnut oil and a bit of salt. Then lemon meringue tartlets for dessert.

Now, I'll admit that until now I've pretty much been an off-dry-white-wine girl. I've been all about the Rieslings and Gewürztraminers and found most other whites just taste like sour, watery, boozy grapes. So the best I can describe this Pouilly-Fumé is that it tastes like a more sour Riesling. It has all this lovely sweet/fruity flavour mixed with a lot of acidity so without the right dish it's very sweet-and-sour but I bet it would be really special if paired just right.
Our pairing was okay, but I think next time I'd match this wine against something more substantial - or at least risk putting some vinegar into the dressing instead of a simple drizzle of oil.

1- An article about pairing wines with salads.
2- Pouilly-Fumé wiki French / English

24 Days of French Wine: Index

It's Advent Calendar time! I'm living in the land of Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Champagne, so why not do a calendar that will let us get acquainted with some of the lovely wines from across this country? From the South-Western pockets near Spain to the Alsacian wines near Germany. Luscious Loire valley whites and rich Rhone reds. I've got the bottles lined up and waiting to be enjoyed with a meal or maybe just a nice chunk of cheese and now I'll document it as best as I can on here for you lovely people! Cheers et à votre santé!

1. Médoc AOC
2. Vin Primeur
3. Languedoc - Corbières
4. Pouilly-Fumé
5. Côtes du Rhône
6. Cahors
7. Languedoc-Roussillon
8. Brouilly
9. Côtes de Bergerac
10. Delayed
11. Delayed
12. Blanquette de Limoux Méthode Ancestrale
13. Madiran
14. Burgundy
15. Pineau des Charentes
16. Delayed
17. Delayed
18. Vouvray
19. -
20. -
21. -
22. -
23. -
24. Champagne

Goodbye Canada - Our last meal(s)

In no particular order, our final meals in the Great White North included a poutine, a Harvey's bacon poutine, lots of pizza, a cheeseburger, a “Christmas on a bun” sandwich (cranberries and turkey are North American, after all) and some wines.

We shared a glass of Ontario's Bodacious white wine, which for a sweeter Riesling/Gewurztraminer/German wine type like me is really a very nice sip, period. The single digit price point is a bonus. (The Bodacious red is good too, but we didn't have any that night.)

Next up was a bottle of Niagara's fine Kittling Ridge Premium Vidal Icewine (2011) which I will preface by mentioning that my palate and nose are completely untrained in wine-tasting before saying that it smelled like apple juice and latex paint but tasted much better than it smelled.

Very sweet and syrupy, a little went a long way. In the end we drank it on ice. I wonder if it would have been much different if we'd let it breathe longer. It went well with strawberries. Personally, I found the Bodacious easier to drink. No, I was not hungover the next day.

Thank goodness!