Cotes du Rhone wine tasting

Last night I hosted my fourth wine tasting event. What a crazy emotional day! It was my last day on the job at Imax and Monday, I start a new gig that I am very excited about. Leaving my job was hard because I have the best boss ever!!! There was a surprise party and presents... lots of fun!

I rushed home, performed tornado style cleaning and cooked up a batch of Swedish meatballs. They came out ok but I want to tweak the recipe to be more flavorful. I also prepared seven glasses of wine for our "smell off". I used a very neutral bottle of wine, a beaujolais nouveau, the base wine and added aromas that would be found in the wines we were drinking tonight. The aromas were blueberry, currant, black pepper, smoke, chocolate, spice, and fennel. The group then smells all the glasses and tries to detect which smell is in the wine. Luckily by the time everything is set up and the meeting gets underway, I tend to forget what is in which glass, so it is a challenge for me too. I got stumped by the blueberry and the currant; I couldn't tell them apart.

We then tasted four Cotes du Rhone wines. Our first was Guigal Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2003. In the bouquet I detected spice and berry, and the flavor had notes of smoke, black pepper and berry. The mouth feel was fabulous and the tannins were grippy but not over bearing. When there was just a little bit of the wine left in the glass, the aroma became plastic and reminded me of toys that I had as a kid.

The next wine was Guigal Crozes-Hermitage 2004. This one was herbaceous, with a dark chocolate hit and dark stone fruit on the finish. Tasted lighter and sweeter than the first bottle.

We then moved to the Eric Texier, Côte du Rhône Brézème 2005 and the Côte-Rôtie Vieilles Vignes 2004. The price point is hugely different on these wines the former is $18 while the latter is $62 and yet they are both excellent quality wines. I was surprised at how light and fruity the wines were tasting because they are Rhone, while not light like Burgundy red, still I wasn't thinking steak but german sausages instead.

I like every wine we has last night. After we all have our little sippy sips of every wine, it turns into a party as we polish off the bottle. I went back to the Pape and this time, after all the wines, the tannis were very grippy, too grippy. It is always fun to go back and see how different the wine is.

The questions that came up during the evening all require a good googling. How are these foreign aromas imparted onto a wine, what is the effect of duty on the price, are the grapes washed before the crush. I don't know!!!