Opening the First Bottle - 2007 Chateau Coupe Roses Minervois la Bastide

Vintage: 2007
Appellation: Minervois
Price: $15.99
Bottle Notes: "Bastide, referring to a fortified farm, is a mouth-filling blend of old-vine carignan and grenache--dark, richly scented, and full of ripe, spicy cherry flavors. A festive wine, it is meant to be drunk young."

With a whole case of great looking French wine in front of me, it was difficult to choose the lead-off hitter. I knew I was going to save the chateau neuf du pape for a special occasion, and some of the others looked good, but I wasn't quite ready for a Bordeaux, and I've been to Bourgogne, so a "festive" wine "meant to be drunk young" seemed like as good a place as any to get started. I've also not had any wines from Languedoc, so exploring a new region was intriguing, as well.

It's a nice wine... very dark, a little tannic, but not super dry. Like many other French wines I've had, it's a bit reserved--those "ripe" cherry flavors tend more towards spicy and dried fruit. It has the ripe aroma and mouth-feel of a pinot noir, but the flavor of something a bit less young--a bit more jammy, a bit more intense. Since my wine vocabulary relies heavily on what I know of American varietals, I'd say it tends more towards Zinfandel, though grenache can't really be compared to other grapes, and I've never had carignan before, so I don't have much frame of reference. It's a very nice middle-of-the road wine... it's not boring, but it's not heavy duty--it just doesn't possess the body or intensity of a cabernet or rhone red, nor does it have the joyous fruitiness of something like a beaujolais. Overall a nice wine to start out.

The Origins

Two things led to the creation of this blog. Okay, well actually three, but two of them are recent and more important. First, I have been into wine for awhile, and have toured Napa and Sonoma a few times and, over time, sort of developed my palate and found which varietals I like best, and from where generally, etc. I would not call myself a connoisseur, but rather an enthusiastic drinker of wine with a very broad and general knowledge of the drink.

Over time, I have tasted a lot of different wines, mostly from California and Oregon, and compiled, in my mind, some general tasting notes. Unfortunately, I hardly ever save bottles or remember names of wines I've drunk unless I buy more of them or make a special note, and so some of my favorite wines I can't rediscover because I don't know what they are! So then, the first thing that has led to this blog is a desire to simply catalog the wines I drink, so that if I like them, I can find them again!

Secondly, at Christmas I received a $125 gift certificate to the Seaboard Wine & Tasting Bar, one of the better purveyors of wine in the Triangle, and a specialist in European wines. I have long wanted to walk into Seaboard and ask them to build me a case representative of the French regional wines--i.e., Languedoc, Bordeaux, Bourgogne, etc. Because my knowledge of wine is fairly limited to the West coast of the US, I have been interested in broadening my horizons and introducing myself to French wines. Later on I'd like to dive into Italians and Germans, as well. This gift certificate from my dad turned out to be the perfect way to accomplish this goal. So I marched into Seaboard, told them to give me a case of French reds that were typical of the various regions, and $175 later, here we are.

That's all well and fine, and I would surely have enjoyed just drinking all these great French wines. But in order to learn anything from the drinking, I knew I'd need to pay attention, make notes, and remember what I was drinking. It's all on the sales receipt, but I needed more. You see, Hanna and I just recently watched Julie and Julia, a movie about a writer who blogged and cooked her way through Julia Child's entire opus Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I have no pretensions or delusions of grandeur regarding creating something similarly compelling, but I thought I ought to put some of my loves together to good use, if only for me--so here I can drink wine, then photograph it and blog about it. Even if no one reads it, I will have a complete collection and record of my wine drinking, so that I might refer to it myself and remember some of my favorites. And that's the great thing about wine--like food, like smells and sounds and photographs; like memories from long ago that are pulled back up by a familiar scent in the breeze--wine, at its best, is more than just an alcoholic beverage made from grapes. It's a moment, an experience, a memory of something special in one's life.

So, here we go! And to anyone reading this, I hope you enjoy it and find something useful. If you do, please let me know!