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…

Chiroubles: some would call it gender fluid. i call it fluid.

ONWARDDDD!!!!!

We have tackled Saint-Amour, Juliénas, Chénas, Moulin-a-Vent, and Fleurie! So let us keep on. To Chiroubles!!

Specifically:

2015 Laurent Gauthier Chiroubles Chatenay “Vielles Vignes”

I got this sucker for about 14 bucks from guess………duh Garagiste.

Oh golly apparently these “old vines” were planted on a steep pink granitic arena. HELLZ YEAH THIS WINE IS A BEEFY WINE AND YET FROM PINK SOIL!

Pink pussy power y’all. Pink granite grit. Feel it. Vinified in whole clusters in concrete vats.

This shit is hardcore essence of pink granitic Gamay and I am into it. It is a delightfully balanced wine, essence-wise. The acid is balanced with ripe blueberry and cherry fruitiness (which so may confuse with sweetness). The light tannins are balanced with…well they are still light but have strong handshake. Wicked oaky tannins would detract from what I ADORE that is hard to find in say…well I don’t know but. Soil is a lady y’all.

What I am saying is this wine has light flowers and I love it. Violets. This wine is violets and I want to french kiss it. As for the finish this wine doesn’t last long or change which is fine. I mean there are the vinos whose finish is so complex and crazy you can’t believe it and want to dwell on it forever but day to day I am a working lady. Sometime I want a quickie.

This wine is tough on the outside but then…those violets. Tasty.

In terms of comparison this wine, as compared to the other crus of Beaujolais is not as tough as most but fuller than Fleurie. Which is full but lacks manliness.

Chiroubles is gender fluid wine. It is true. I hear you giggling at that. Stop making fun of me. It is funny because it is true.

So actually, go ahead and laugh. I own my silliness. I’m macho like that.

omGODello i.e. A Whole New Wine!

WHOOAAS dudes have I EVER reviewed a white wine? 

Maybe…once? Oh wait twice if you don’t count a few bubblies. Bubbly Une. Bubbly Deux. Bubbly Trois.

And I don’t count bubblies in the same category as flat whites because they are made completely differently. And two of them came in cans for heaven’s sakes. And speaking of heaven, let me get punny and bring up GODello.

Godello. Not just a new thing to be writing on white wine but this is a whole new grape! From Spain! Omigosh.

Cool down kids, we will get through this. Stronger together.

Breath. In, out. 

Okay. Drink.

2014 Adras “Godello” Ribeira Sacra (13.91 from Garagiste)

Is this heavenly? Does it make me think of church?

Yes and yes for different reasons.

The church bit: Ya know the wet stone feel of an old church? If you don’t, hie thee to Europe. Or an old church or the St. Louis Art Museum–the old wing. But not to the church I grew up going to because we had grape juice at communion. And it was red. Although now that I think of it if I ran a church I would be forced to be punny and serve Godello. Because the more wretched the pun the better.

It runs in my family. Or should I say it puns in the…okay I’ll stop.

Oh right so there are a lot of wet stone notes in this wine hence the church remembrance. Yummm wet stone smell. And then in your mouth a bit of that chalky taste reminiscent of all the limestone that…okay probably wasn’t in your actual youth so much as my wine-addled mind’s imagination.

Heavenly? Well it is all full of lemons and meyer lemons (totes diff taste y’alls) and honeydew melon tastes. But then there is just a whiff of a finish of grass.

So imagine you are at, say, a church potluck. That for some reason is being held in the stone-smelling sanctuary. And someone brought a nice bright fruit salad with melon in it and it must have some lemon juice and maybe an orange slice or so in it. And while munching on the salad, breathing in the stony air you step out of doors for some reason. Maybe you’ve heard the lemonade-monger, that crazy kid! And it is a sunny grassy spring day. And there is a kid selling lemonade and you say yes and while chewing that salad you gulp some lemonade and breath in the church lawn. Got it?

That’s the combo of stone/fruit/herbaciousness you will get. In Godello.

No one said religion was simple.

No? Not working for the imagination? Well then find a bottle. Okay? Just say a little prayer of thanks for tasty wine.

And trying new things!

Novelty. Is sometimes the ticket to temporary brilliance.

Get ye some godello. Go with Godello!

I love you as much as she does,

 

GARAGISTE!

This is me waiting, desperately for the decant. Let me at it.

  
At long last I got my delivery. The wicked awesome Jon Rimmerman of the Garagiste goes about and finds wines like this biodynamic oner, and then emails wine lovahs (only if it is lovah with an “ah” not an “er”) with deals. JK re: “ahs”. Pretty sure anyone who signs up gets emailed. Sometimes wine you’re ordering is not even in the bottle yet. But Garagiste has tasted and knows what goodness is to come. There are DANG good deals. And the newsletter musings make amazing reading 1-2 times a day. Provided you are a wine lovah. Lover.

To my (initial) chagrin, they don’t send you your wine until A) you have at least 12 bottles that you’ve ordered, aka a full crate o’ wine amassed, (which takes time since sometimes the wine you order has not even been put in a bottle yet, much less made its way to Washington) and B) shipping conditions from Washington to wherever you are happen to be perfect. And finally I had both 12 wines and the weather was right and I got my first selection.

And much as you want to dive in this box o’ bottles, a maddening letter is placed atop your selection admonishing, downright ADMONISHING you to not drink for another couple of weeks because these babies have been jostling about during shipping the last day or so and they need to rest their tired souls. Let your wine rest. Or else! And you figure you’ve been patient enough so far, so may as well be patient just a wee bit longer.

And to make the waiting even more excruciating Garagiste says to most enjoy this particular bottle  it may need 30-60 minutes of decant time post pouring. BUT they say to sip along the way and so sip I friggin did. 

Ohhhhh shit and the official website for this wine says after all that initial waiting just for a sip or two, to cork the bottle and taste again and again over the next few journées (like, aujourd’hui, aujourd’hui, aujourd’hui and also demain and maaaaaaybe the day after but who the fuck are we kidding) to see how the wine develops and improves. So more bloody waiting. As in, don’t polish off the bottle in a night.

Oh right what we are drinking:

2011 Nicolas Joly Savennières “Les Vieux Clos”

Biodynamic.

From one of my favorite places to source vin. The Loire Valley. Savennières. Doy.

The grape is Chenin Blanc, m’dears.

The bottle itself advised “vigorous decanting”. I poured this golden elixir from some great heights observing the neck for sediment in some great lights. As one must to decant. With vigor.

Garagiste advised that Joly follows the tradition of German Riesling houses and over-fills, so not to be alarmed by damp cork. Good. Because that cork was funky. It looked kinda gross.

So many warnings. So many admonishments. By the time I got to sipping I was terrified. I sniffed long and hard at first. I got nettles, peaches and PINEAPPLE. I love pineapple. And an element of resin. In a way I assumed would be sweet.

It is not sweet! Happily surprisingly. It is full-bodied without being syrupy. Full without being thick. Dry without being bony.

A kumquat may be cooling his heels in there. Kumquats are welcome to cool whatever body part they want in my wine, incidentally. Fuck those who take the rind and discard the rest, I will take it all. Ahem.

There is underlying honey but the first hit says “pine tree” followed by pineapple. The back of your tongue says allspice. That’s happy. The finish burns out with all those elements, swirling about in your mouth. Then you are good to go.

It stands out to me that this wine starts as a jumble of tastes but by ten seconds post-swallow those jumbles knit together.

The Impressionist painting of wines. If Monet made wine, this would be it.

These are my “first fifteen minutes notes”. I’ll revise in about a half hour.

The decanting should be more…vigorized?

Okay time has passed, time for more notes. Post channeling-Courtney Love-circa-1993-ish. And documenting via selfies. Ugh me.

MORE spice has developed. The spices don’t fade, they get stronger by the minute.
The allspice gathers the most momentum, along with some orange zest. It gets sweeter but is that the temperature playing a part?

I dunno. I liked this wine five and a half times better than I thought I would.

I like it a lot.

Or else I wouldn’t share it, kittens.

24 hours later:

OH SHIT! 24 hours n that shit gets cray. The allspice increases tenfold. The acid mellows. The color still looks like unhealthy piss but so does a good juice or so so I will let it pass.. Heck.

Less resin (althpoug it is still there) and more honey. This time the allspice is IN THE FOREFRONT, IT IS. RESIN IS STILL THERE HARDCORE OH SHIT IS THAT MY CAPS LOCK ON? my bad

And now it is two nights past popping:
There is an emerging grassy minerality. The spices say “less allspice, more pepper”. Maybe even an arugula leaf or so. The resin is an afterthought, a smooth finish.

Three nights:
I’m down to the dregs. It is significantly sweeter. The honey is expressing itself more than resin. Think pineapple with allspice but it has been drizzled with honey. I think 1-2 days in was the prime, which does not surprise me.

So buy and if you are curious, eke it out. Otherwise go wild big spender. Buy several. Drink that mother down in a night or so. Then do it again.