Food & Wine Discovery all around the world
Posted on 28 July 2019 by COOK_WINE_DINE
Wicked PIENSA
A surprising discovery for a surprising wine, let me tell you the story.
First, let’s go through the blind tasting process. When you don’t know what’s in your glass, you can only guess. Very few people are able to identify the grape varieties, the vintage, the origin of a wine by a simple sniff. So you have to proceed by elimination to narrow down your possibilities.
- Light or pronounced colour?
- Purple, ruby or garnet?
- Red or black fruit aromas?
- Oak or not?
- Sweet of dry?
- High or low acidity?
- Light or full body?
- Low or high tannins?…
Back to the story. So we were invited for dinner by our “wine mentor” that used to blind test us on a regular basis. He is a former acclaimed sommelier, still very active in the wine industry across the world. His knowledge is huge, he tasted some of the best wines in the world but he’s also very interested in new, unusual products. So for the apéritif, he pours us this wine and its appearance is already surprising. It was light ruby red with a lot of slow legs running down the glass, representative for a fuller body. On the nose, it was full of fresh red fruits with a little something that reminded me of a Sauterne. So we were already very confused but it got worse when we tried the wine. A medium sweet, full bodied red wine with high acidity and low tannins, nothing made sense with what we had learnt. Our mentor let us struggle for a while, we all guessed wrongly. He revealed the wine with a smile and said “it’s a red and sweet white wine”. Wait whaaat?
So yes, as you can see on the label, the wine is a blend of red and sweet white wines. It is made from 65% of merlot, 30% of botrytised sémillon and 5% of cabernet sauvignon. The wine is lightly sweet but with enough structure and complexity to make it interesting.
It took an Argentinean wine producer, Alejandro Lopez, to move to France to imagine and bring to life this crazy, unconventional, amazing blend. It is the perfect wine to sip for hours on a hot summer afternoon and we hope you get the chance to taste it! If you do, we’d be very happy to hear your opinion.
Cheers 🍷
CREDITS: @cook_wine_dine