Originally published on March 23, 2010.
So we’ll be hosting another winemaker at Frankly Wines tonight: Tuesday, March 23, 5.30pm – 7.30pm
Raimond de Villeneuve of Chateau de Roquefort will be pouring his Clairette, Corial rose, and Guele de Loup, all of which are regulars on our shelves. Biodynamic, all between $15 – $20, all very, very tasty.
In the picture, he’s sporting a lovely red clown nose (a nez rouge) which I’ll be asking him about tonight. The picture is from a slightly surreal French website: Momo le Clown Gourmand. It features a very extensive who’s who of the French wine and culinary world – all sporting red clown noses. Seriously. It’s worth checking out. And make sure you have the volume on because it also plays some catchy traditional French tunes, which imagine are about clowns.
So back to the wines. If we’re lucky, Raimond will bring along some samples of his higher end wines. The cases are on a boat making its way to the ports of New Jersey, but yesterday at his distributor’s portfolio tasting, he had a few samples open. There was the Momentum, which is a new wine that is made to tilt a bit more to the American palate. This generally means more fruit, more ripeness and more oak, often the point of overdone. In this case, the wine was just a bit more…more. Still very much in the same style as the other wines, with just a little more there there. It was tasty, but I preferred his other two wines, Poupre and Rubrum. These are wines that would sit at around $35 and $60 on the shelf. They’re both what I simply call Provencal kitchen soup blends (some combination of Syrah, Carignan, Grenache, Mourvedre, and possibly Cinsault) and are only made in years when Raimond feels the grapes warrant it. Which is not every year. I think he said he’s only made the Pourpre three times in many years, but I will confirm that tonight. The Pourpre is all ripe, vivid fruits with an underlying freshness. The Rubrum shows more Mourvedre and has the brambly, baked earth (that’s baked earth, not baked fruit. Very very different things.) quality that I love about my favorite Provencal wines.
Anyhow, if we’re lucky, we’ll have some of those to taste tonight. If not, we’ll be stocking them as soon as the cases clear customs.