Can I not?

…interrupt the Beaujolais crus series for a canned treat?

…drink out of a bottle…or a can?

…drink pink but wear black lipstick?

…watch Clue on repeat?

…make up my own lyrics?

…ENJOY a pink canned wine spritzer thingamabob?

…especially as I got a four-pack in the mail from the generous Gallo folks?

I CAN. I do what I want and what I wanted was a cool bev bordering on uncouth and dessert all in one fell swoop.

Short version:

This tastes of peppy berries and sugar and SweetTarts and fucking teenage happiness. It is a sugar sweet (not even BITTERsweet) Joy of Life Just Because Swill.

I don’t review every drink that arrived at my door. I review this because it is fucking fun and some of you including me may like it. 

BEHOLD: Barefoot Refresh Rosé Spritzer

The website will show a picture of a bottle but this stuff is canned. Could I drink a load of it? Nah. Could I drink this the same way I used to drink Mike’s Hard Lemonade at barbecues? Heck yah.

Could I drink it when needing to be ironically goth thus sporting chains and too much black eyeliner on both eyes and lips but wearing and drinking pink? Fuck yah.

Could I give it to my friend who drinks sweet stuff who likely likes Barefoot’s other pink bevs? Bloody hell yes.

So this can tells you what you are gonna taste because presumably if you bought it you are not going to be slowly sniffing and swirling but gulping but HOPEFULLY appreciating. The can states: “Aromas of raspberry and pomegranate. Enjoy at the beach a backyard BBQ or any barefoot occasion”.

No progress sipping at any of those places but at home I’m always gonna be barefoot and lemme tell you that works too.

 

Chénas? CheNOT. Harharhar

Oh hey this is the wine that held me up from being ready to write my whole Beaujolais series. I could not friggin’ find a Chénas. Until finally Garagiste came through. With:

2015 Pascal Aufranc “En Remont Vignes de 1939”

Please excuse the hasty nature of that pic. Been busy making this podcast n such.

Honestly maybe there is a reason this cru is not around much, because this is possibly my least favorite Beaujolais cru thus far–I’ve  tasted St-Amour, Julienas, Moulin-vent, Fleurie, Morgon, Regnié and Brouilly so far, so I have a tad bit of experience.

Okay. So this Chènas is good but a bit green for me. Okay? So Garagiste says to drink 2018-2024. Okay okay! So maybe I drank it 6 months early and if I’d waited the green would have…evolved…so okay…just okay. 

On the good side! This wine is:

A delicious smell that you can’t quite place. Maybe it smells like blueberry pie. But not in a way that makes you hungry. It smells like lavender and pine trees too but jussssst enough to relax you. And then that is not actually quite the wine’s smell just the essence. 

It is a wine you suck down to chill out on a night in. A quiet time before the next day when you fly off the next job, wine, book, audition, destination whichever…

Or so I surmise. Until I can fly to 2018 and beyond and sip this wine I cannot say where it will go.

I love Gamay enough I’ll give Chénas more tries. Until the I am going to be continuing my trek (virtually) through the crus. Onward!

Et tu, Beaujolais? Yup this Juliénas will kill

Firstly pretty please check out The Whine Situation, my new comedy n wine podcast on iTunes and  we just got added to Stitcher too yeaaaaaaaa. If you like it n wanna give us an iTunes subscribe or rating all the better. 

One more distraction before the next cru! I was a guest on The Delightful Table, a fantastic blog by my friend Scheherezade features sustainable cooking and seasonal veggies. We experimented pairing “difficult to pair” veggies with wines. Check out the artichoke madness here! 

And now. We are moving on down through the Beaujolais crus! From flippant Saint-Amour to rather stern Juliénas! A jerk face who is sinister and will beat your mouth up. In a good way, of course!

Named for Caesar. Shall we salad with this wine? Would a Caesar salad pair well? Huh, I feel like maybe not but it’s worth investigating. The wine in question:

2015 David-Beaupere Juliénas “Vayolette”

I got it for about 20 bucks from Garagiste, my favorite source for interesting wines at jolly prices.
Juliénas has a variety of terroirs but the unifying factor tends to be that they are bigger and rougher wines.

This wicked wine was grown in yards of volcanic blue stone, and was made organically. It is a unique devil.

Holy moly it’s high alcohol! 15 % abv. Holy heck it bashes your tongue with little blue pebbles and bramble cranberries! I don’t care if bramble cranberries are not a thing in case you were concerned. I taste violets are blooming in the pebbles to boot. What is this specimen? How is it conquering me with so many different sensations that don’t match yet go together?

And holy holy hell is this wine dark.

Purple as sin. Presuming sin’s true color when showing true colors is purple. The darkness is in flavor too: black pepper, a bit of…I dunno. This is a total snobby “I imagine” tasting note but I bet if those dark purple irises–ya know the flower I’m speaking of?–had a flavor it would be in this wine.

The biggest difference between this and our friend St. Love is the power and the depth. The similarity? The lack of tannins! Many times I taste a tannic wine and describe it as beating my mouth up but this tongue-beater does so without tannins.

Tricky tricky sly sly Caesar.

Now to make that salad (but sans anchovies in the dressing seeing as I’m a vegetarian).

Cheers and tongue-lashings! 

Comedy plus wine!

It hath arrived! We shall get back to the crus next week but this is an odd extra entry to implore you to subscribe to my podcast! The Whine Situation is a podcast in which a guest comedian brings my cohost Shaughn Buchholz and I a whine. We pair it with wine. Imbibing and a goodly amount of laughter ensues along with a bit of stealthy wine knowledge! 

Subscribe in iTunes here! Rate and review if ya will!

It should be on Stitcher soon. 

Or you can just go to the website too!

I Feel Amour. The Cycle begins!

I’ve been saying it for some time. That I was going to do a cycle going through all the lovely Beaujolais crus. Those are: Saint-Amour, Julienas, Chenas, Moulin-à-Vènt, Fleurie, Chiroubles, Morgon, Régnié,  Côte de Brouilly, and Brouilly. I came up with a device to remember this: Saint Julian Called Many French Cheapo Madams Really Comely Broads.

And I’ve been feeling the…oh…feeling of spring so what better time to jump into Saint-Amour? The most northerly. We begin at zee beginning.

2015 Pascal Berthier “Esprit de Séduction” Saint-Amour

Beyond waiting for spring fever it took me fucking forever to find a Chenas and I wanted to have located all the crus before starting the dang cycle. But we are here now.

I am feeling love for this Saint-Amour, the most northern of the Beaujolais crus. Ah yes, the granite/clay/schist/limestone soils are on hillier regions than much of the Beaujolais area. Hills can be lovely for wine that wants warmth and sun. And Gamay, the Beaujolais grape, needs a whiff of both.

So far I love this wine and it is loving me back.

Blueberries, y’all. And more blueberries plus blackberries and friggin’ slate blackboard. Picture your childhood art teacher grabbing blue chalk and drawing blueberries and you lick the board and it actually tastes both like the board, the chalk, and the berries. Therrrrre you go. This is a classic gamay in its freshness, berry-ness, a hint of some sort of fortified wine so whaaaa—chamomile/herbs/quinine?—and just more love.

Love y’all back. Next week———–Julienas!

We are cycling together my people. Love you too. 

 

SPRING (no less dramatic than winter) comes rosé!

Before I go on, let me give my recommendation. If you see 2015, nab it. Drink it. Love the hell out of it. That being said that advice expires in maybe a year and the following is also so truly worthy:

2016 Chateau de Trinquevedel Tavel

Fucking ephemeral beverages. You can LOVE one vintage and then the next vintage you adore ever so slightly less. But then you can’t source old bottles because wine is a living being. Those old bottles might not continue to stand up.

But if you trust the winemaker you can trust that the future vintages will be delights in their own right.

Fucking youth focused culture. For wine. For anyone.

Actually that’s inaccurate, as wine’s rep amongst the misguided masses is that older is better. But that is not so for rosé, generally.

Still, at this Chateau even if the older ones…expire…you’ve faith they will continue the good work.

The 2015 vintage had me like “FUCK that is still one of the BEST rosés”

The 2016 I liked a tad less. It smelled like more, but lacked the linen complexity of of 2015. Yet I still thought of it this: 

“It has all the elements in a perfect balance, all I miss is starched napkins!”

Then I thought “good golly I’m an idiotic snob.”

But I can’t FUCKING wait to continue to taste the Trinquevedel as the years go by. It is a special wine methinks–and affordable too!

 I have had one bottle of 2015 and a couple of 2016 left and I need the discipline to save one of each to compare when 2017 surfaces. 

So! The side by side of what I have. Well duh yah because I think 2015 may be a smidgen better that inhibits me from judging 2016 accurately.

Oh. Well.

But okay. I will stop waxing poetic on the other years so we can FRIGGIN’ REVEL in the 2016.

Lemme give the 2016 stats:

To the eye: clear, medium plus salmon (nearly peach perfect) and medium tears.

To my nose: clean, medium, strawberries, white cherries, strawberries. And stone. White stone. Youthful.

The most of all important tongue!!!!:

Dry, medium acid, medium minus minus tannin (Iget a hint), Medium alcohol, (13.5%abv which technically is barely medium plus but to me it is medium feeling), body  is medium plus for a rosé!!! Flavor intensity medium plus with flavor of     white and yellow peaches, oak bough, raspberries, stewed strawberries and  rhubarb pie. 

Finish: medium plus medium play take that to mean what you will

This wine goes on!

Join me and we will revel. And since I’m a woman wine professional I call reveling work. Work for the Friggin’ Win.

Lurve y’all! I promise to go back to love but right now I’m in a lurve phase.

Cheers dahhhhlings.