24 Days of French Wine: Cahors

Cahors is a dark, full, red wine from southwestern France.  The region is known for using Malbec in its blend.

~The details~
Name: Chateau La Poujade
Year: 2014
Region: Cahors Appellation d'Origine Protegée
Grape/Cépage: L'auxerrois, Merlot
Alcohol: 13%
Serving Temp: 17C
Serving ideas: Duck breast, grilled foods, cheeses
Special notes: Bottled on the property. Produced using traditional methods.

What we did:  Duck breast/magret de canard with orange sauce, spinach sauteed with garlic and shallots, and fresh baguette.

When I was researching, I was a bit intimidated by this wine and didn't think I'd like it all that much. I expected some scary, dark, puckeringly dry thing but I was very pleasantly surprised to find it was really, really yummy! We've had a couple fruity, acidic reds and we've had some more tannic, oaky wines as well. Both nice in their own ways, but each very different. This was everything turned up full blast! Dark, plummy, fruity, and velvety all at the same time. One of my favourite reds so far!

We were lucky enough to have friends over - who are better versed in wine than me - when we opened the bottle. It was so neat that they guessed it was a Chilean wine.  That would be the Malbec coming through.

Speaking of Malbec, this tripped me up and took a few searches to sort out. Nowhere on the bottle is Malbec listed! It says Merlot and Auxerrois. So what's going on?
Well it turns out, Auxerrois is the name of a white grape except in this little area of Cahors where it is a name for Malbec (a.k.a. Côt). Mystery solved. Cheers!

24 Days of French Wine: Côtes du Rhône

Today's wine comes from the Côtes du Rhône region. It's a region some say is famous more due to scale than to quality.  The area covers 200km from Lyons down to the Camargue region, with little pockets of more specialized appellations scattered throughout.  A basic Côtes du Rhône wine tends to be fairly inexpensive.

~The details~ 

Name: Les Combes de Saint-Sauveur
Year: 2014
Region: Appellation Côtes du Rhône Contrôlée
Grape/Cépage: unlisted (probably Grenache?)
Alcohol: 12.5%
Serving Temp: unlisted (room temperature? 18-ish?)
Serving Ideas: Meats in sauce, roasted meat, poultry, cheeses
Special Notes: none

What we did: Picked a wine to fit our usual Saturday meal. A rotisserie chicken and potatoes from the morning market.  So good.

My first impression was that the wine smelled like alcohol. To drink, I got a lot of fruit and some mineral notes. Not a lot of tannins. When enjoyed with the chicken, it felt hearty and satisfying and it had enough acid to cut through all the fatty, delicious, roasted chicken skin.  Not a revelation but definitely better than a "meh" wine. It was great for a casual, sit-down, feel-good meal.

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: Languedoc-Corbières

Day 3 we have a wine from the Languedoc region. The climate here is Mediterranean with lots of sun and really ripe grapes, so you get a nice round grape, fruity when young, with a high alcohol content.

~The details~ 

Name: Les Pluviers
Year: 2014
Region/Appellation: Corbières AOC
Grape/Cépage:  unlisted (most likely grenache and syrah. Maybe some carignan.)
Alcohol: 12.5% vol.
Serving Temp: 16-18C
Serving ideas: grilled foods, meat in sauce, strong cheeses, aged cheeses

What we did: Steak dinner! We started with some leftover tapenade on baguette slices and then had steak with a super simple sauce of pan drippings deglazed with wine and served with a nice crusty baguette and bacon-fried Brussels sprouts.

For starters, I preferred the tapenade with yesterday's vin primeur, personally. There was nothing really wrong with this wine - it was fruity, a bit mineral, with some mild tannins. Hubby preferred this wine to yesterday's. I preferred yesterday's wine. There was something about this Corbières that just fell flat to me. Maybe it was the meal choice. Maybe we should have let it breathe more. Maybe the temperature wasn't quite right. Maybe I was distracted by my twisted ankle. Who knows? Not bad. Not magical. I'd give it another shot, though.

24 Days of French Wine: Vin Primeur

Today's selection is a vin primeur.

These are wines that are sold very young, being given only enough time to ferment and meant to be enjoyed right away. The best known of these is Beaujolais Nouveau, though several regions have their own vin primeur. We chose a bottle from a local producer.

~The details~
Name: Domaine La Blaque - Vin Primeur 2015
Year: 2015!
Region: Pierrevert, Provence
Appellation: Alpes de Haute Provence Indication Géographique Protegée
Grape/Cépage: unlisted (but their website says they grow Syrah, Grenache noir, Carignan, and Cinsault)
Alcohol: 12.5%
Serving Temp: unlisted (shop lady advised room temperature)
Serving ideas: unlisted
Special notes: Bottled at the domaine. Organic.

What we did: As recommended by the shop lady (who is awesome, by the way) we did an apéro-diner with local olives, tapenade, raw sheep's milk cheese, crudités, baguette, and cooked white boudin sausages (it was on sale).

I honestly didn't know what to expect from this. I'd heard vin primeur described as fresh, fruity, barely tannic but also as harsh and over-hyped. I sampled it a few weeks ago when it was first released and was pretty neutral about it. Sometimes wine is just wine.

Tonight, though, paired with lots of highly salted nibbles, I found it a bit sweet, very fruity, and highly quaffable - dangerously easy to drink.  The saltiness mellowed the harsher notes of the wine, letting the sweet fruit shine and the wine tempered the bitterness of the olives and the "goatier" aspects of the sheep's cheese.

Just out of curiosity, I tried a sip after a bite of the chocolate cake we were having for dessert and it lost all its magic. We were right back to a slightly harsh "enh, it's wine" experience. The salty nibbles were key. Final verdict: a great party wine and finally a reason to look forward to Novembers! I'd drink it again.

24 Days of French Wine: Medoc AOC Bordeaux

First up, a wine from the Médoc area of the Bordeaux region.

Oh my goodness, I could probably do an Advent Calendar from Bordeaux wines alone! The area is large - around 100km north to south and east to west. It covers two rivers (Dordogne and Garonne) which feed into an estuary (Gironde) which meets up with the Atlantic Ocean.

As I understand it - thanks to a brief study at the University-O-Wikipedia - the better the wine, the more specific they are about where it came from. Starting with the great big region of Bordeaux, you get to smaller areas, such as Médoc, and whittle right down to the few premier cru wines proudly bearing the names of exactly whence they came, with all sorts of other labels in between.

Medoc itself is the northwest-most area of Bordeaux, near the edge of the estuary, almost next to the Atlantic.

~The details~
Name: L'Allée du Roy
Year: 2014
Grape/Cépage: Unlisted
Region: Médoc - North-west end of the Bordeaux region, near the Atlantic
Label: Grand Vin de Bordeaux; Appellation Médoc Contrôlée
Alcohol: 12.5% vol.
Serving Temp: 15-16C; 59-61F
Serving Ideas: Cheeses or grilled meats

What we did: Burgers, medium-rare! Cheeseburgers and fries from the place next door.

I'll admit, we only had this with supper on the 5th because nobody was feeling well on the 1st, but I'm glad it worked out this way. We got to experience this Médoc after the Vin Primeur and after the Côtes du Rhône. What a difference! Where the others wines were sweet, sharp, fruity, and zingy, this was deep with oak and just... velvety. Hello, tannins. I can't even compare the two. They're like apples and oranges: sure, they're both fruit and both great but they're just not the same!
Burgers probably weren't the best or most sophisticated pairing but we enjoyed ourselves and our meal and comparing the two wines (Médoc and leftover Côtes du Rhône from lunch) made for a very fun experience.


1- Link to map of Bordeaux sub-regions.
2- More about Bordeaux. (Wiki)

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