Thanks to the man who mans Wine Post, our Wine Blogging Wednesday assignment for this month was to revisit a favorite and then write the post in twice the amount of time it took you to enjoy the wine. My pick was the 2007 Can Blau from the Montsant region of Spain. I love this wine for it elegance, richness and price (around $14 everywhere except where the Negress lives in Maryland). I opened the bottle at about 5 p.m. on Monday, retrieved one of my better Spiegelau glasses from the hutch and poured Glass No. 1 at 5:05. After preparing Trader Joe’s vegetable samosas, I sat down with the wine and the food and started to enjoy. The samosas vanished quickly and I poured another glass, noting how nicely the blend of Carinena, Syrah and Garnacha played off the spiciness of the samosas. With the second glass, I started to notice the deep notes of blackberry and black cherry on the palate. The wine is made by Australian Liz Reed and Catalan winemaker Ricard Rofes. The Montsant region wraps around Priorat like a horseshoe, and offer wines of similar body to its pricey neighbor but at a much more agreeable price. I first heard about this wine from the Cervantes Institute master of Spanish wines Helio San Miguel. Miguel offered a tasting at the New York cultural center where all of the wines were made by female winemakers. I’ve been in love with it ever since. However, the third glass was not the charm during this time tasting. I got slightly woozy but finished the glass by 7 p.m. I really did finish the glass since when I went to the sink to wash it out I managed to break it but contained the fragments to the sink. Thank Heaven Spiegelau replacements are fairly easy to find. I have about a half bottle of the Can Blau left. It was my last bottle so I would like to get another case to be on the safe side.
Archive for November, 2009
Goats Do Roam White 2008: the grim reality
November 10, 2009Time has passed, severance has run out and the house will be sold hours from now. There are other events and epiphanies in the background but I am so saving those for the memoir. With the money tap being turned off by Dying Media, the wine budget was revised downward since there is no public option for wine buying. It could be argued that drinking wine is my new health care plan but I doubt my endocrinologist would go for that. So, with limited funds and the sprawling variety of the wine stores of Montgomery County at my disposal (wine is verboten at the Trader Joe’s in Maryland so perusing plonk is limited to wine stores), I picked up a couple of bottles of Goats Do Roam White. I figured it couldn’t be but so terrible since the other Goats Do Roam wines I had sampled had enough insouciance for me to buy them more than once. So, as the days lumbered on and I finally achieved a car bike rack with the helps of the guys at Griffin Cycle, I drank less, conserving my stash for harder times to come. I also went through a period where I was sending out at least one job application a day. The silence on that front has been enveloping but I soldier on. Meanwhile, my sister is navigating the backwaters of social service agencies and should be leaving the premises any day now. Hospice has been great for Mom and I have discovered the pleasures of cooking with jalapeno and serrano peppers. I also got repayment of part of a loan I made just in the nick of time.
It could be all those incremental triumphs that made the Goats Do Roam White make such a feeble impression. This wine had nothing to it. It was a white blend (no grape varieties are listed on the label but they are laid out here). It tasted like something had watered it down. Now that I know it’s more than half Viognier, the wimpiness is unforgivable. This was a dull, tiresome, forgettable wine. It made me angry since I had low expectations and they weren’t met. If I had been drinking say the 2005 Reignac Blanc, I’d be primed for layered fabulousness and I would get it in spades. Same with the 2007 Bedell Cellars Reserve Chardonnay. Since the wine club shipment arrived to an Undisclosed Location, I drank both bottles in the shipment somewhat regretfully since this wine does improve with age. I didn’t give it a chance.
Anyway, you can do better in the value wine category than the Goats Do Roam 2008 white. I recommend the Yalumba Viognier (the export Y series), which is delicious, fun and spiky with honeysuckle and citrus. Go thou and do this, not the other thing.
