It ain’t LA if…insert podcast reference here

 

I promise a finale to the cru Beaujolais series very soon.

It ain’t LA if you aren’t selfie-ing up a storm and self-promoting like crazy so I take this self-indulgent moment to say if you haven’t yet, please take a listen to The Whine Situation! We pair funny people’s whines with wines. No it is not for a wine professional. Just people who want to laugh and possibly learn a little about wine.

We are on iTunes, Stitcher, Youtube, and you can stream anytime from Libsyn! YAY.

This week we tackle the whine of why people have to hate on LA. So this post is meta or something.

Please listen. Subscribe. Rate etc the whole shebang. Get in.

 

The edge: Côte de Brouilly and rose to raspberry to bloody pastilles

Oh shit what is Brouilly? What is the Côte thereof? How doth it stack up? Most that I’ve had from Brouilly proper has bordered on FONNNKY. Funky. Like natural. And now here we are on the border of Brouilly. The Côte.

If you want recaps of all the crus I’ve traversed through thus far here they be:

Régnié

Morgon

Chiroubles 

Fleurie

Moulin-A-Vent

Chénas

Juliénas
And!
Saint-Amour

And now we are on the next to the last of the crus, Côtes de Brouilly!

The example:

2015 Pavillon de Chavannes Cote de Brouilly “Cuvee des Ambassades”

The further south I’ve gone in my tastings the more pastille I get. Pastilles being the candies you see me holding up in the picture to prove I know what I am talking of. The taste being violet, some rose and anise. Lest you doubt my expertise I BOUGHT THESE DANG PASTILLES. FOR YOU DEAR READER. Just to double check.

This one my be the pastille-est of the bunch yet! On the nose you get more rose and raspberry. On the tongue it has the not sweet-sweetness of a pastilles PLUS berries. Oof. And duper super high acid. The alcohol? My WSET trained body said was medium-ish. I am gonna say medium so 13.5% abv maybe? Going to check….OH SHIT! Just 12.5% abv. Heck well it felt like more.

 

I’m just going to be a terrible person and say that I give this wine the major descriptor of NOM. No one uses that term anymore and I don’t believe in it. “Nom” is a stupid term but what the heck. I will be stupid today. I’ll be smart talking about the last of the crus next week. But when I sipped this wine I thought “hell this feels like nummy, funking nummy booze. Nom”.

There you go

Am I sure it is only 12.5 abv? I don’t sound like it, do I? Maybe there’s something else in these pastilles…

Regnié and a Red Hat

The name of this wine inspired me to put on a red cap of my own.

Apologies to Mets, Cubs and Giants fans in particular, but I’m a Cardinals girl. Okay now that that’s out of the way–

On this Beaujolais journey we have swilled on down:

Morgon

Chiroubles

Fleurie

Moulin-A-Vent

Chénas

Juliénas
And!
Saint-Amour

Okey dokey yea now we are on to Regnié. I talked about it once before.

But this one oh yes.

2012 Bonnet Rouge Regnié

Holy hell no sulfur! Normally I worry about that ending up stanky in a bad way but this is a natural phenomen. 

Thank god or I would think it unseemly… that this is…okay there is no polite way to say but cloudy.

Okay so also it is not penultimate in complexity. But it is more interesting than wines I’ve tasted three times the 10-ish dollar expense of this one.

If you hate: licorice, anise, or tarragon ye best run.

I LOVE this wine and probably would pay three times the amount it was (which would still be medium in price) because it is friggin’ RIFE with licorice-y taste deeeelite..but more than that anise? It makes me think of springerles–cookies my family makes around Christmas.

Which are the magic.

THE magic. This is an alcoholic springerle in a glass.

With just a bit more than a hint of the pastille I get in the Morgon. 

The Morgon has about as much pastille as I got in Chiroubles. This is a tiny region and hell now I want to open all three crus and do an anise-off between them. And I might chase that with some absinthe. Just so I can compare to the hardcore but jeez just all the anise/licorice/pastille etc ness. Y’all.

How does this compare? Oddly the further south I get the fresher the flavor I get. A phenomenon you see in say, Napa Velley but I don’t know it the type of wine (i.e. natural or not) has something to do with it. Still learning.

Anywho this has the delightful Gamay classic flavor of ALL sorts of cherries. Violets. And then that licorice and anise. The licorice and anise overwhelm my tastebuds but I FUCKING LOVE THEM. If you don’t this will undoubtedly be not good to you.

But fuck yah if I would not believe this bottle was 25-30. Not just under ten.

Bargain royalty.

And go Redbirds!! We need to win some more games so I can toast them with this red hat wine.