Carmenere

2007
Root 1
Colchagua Valley, Chile

For the price, this is a good buy.

Carmenere = "The lost grape of Bordeaux" - part of the original six red grapes of Bordeaux, it is more commonly found now in Chile.


Nice crimson color with a spicey blackberry flavor and a sort of herb-like beef bouillion finish. An all-over pleasant tasting wine. I am a fan of Root 1's Cabernet Sauvignon as well. This is more "merlot-like" and, as a merlot fan, I like it very much.

"But it feels like losing when someone you love throws you away . . . "
Ryan Adams, "Fix It"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si14rmNJcvA

8.25 of out 10
14% alc. by vol.
$10 / 750 bottle
root1wine.com

Los Vascos Cabernet

2006
Colchagua Valley
Chile

Overall, this wine is a good deal for the price. Owned by one of the more premier older French vineyard owners, this wine was medium bodied and dry with a light oak flavor and scent, mingled with green pepper taste, slight black cherry and black pepper finish. Not a long finish, not a deep wine, but perfect for every day to have on hand. The Guy and I reviewed Los Vascos 2004 Reserve last year, and I think I like this more.




My Wine Eludes Me

In the midst of hardening reality
Questioning, praying, on the edge of delusion and then forsaking
Only to initiate the cycle again

Knowledge, religion, veracity, asseveration
Ebb and flow through the veins
Afflicting the heart and the brain
Even my wine eludes me

Ransacking for solace, or just a sign
Beholding the electronic medium
It is the lyrics to a song that taunt me in possessive irony
The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" offers me no mental release

Nothing is as it seems



7.75 out of 10
$10 (or less) / 750 ml bottle
14% alc. by vol.

Arboleda Carmenere and Chateau Saint-Jean Red Rhone

Thank you Pasa Robles for your comments on "The Ball Buster". Your description of your experience sounded much more enjoyable than my own.

A few points up front:

1. The Bro made a great statement last night. He said he's been disappointed with wines because he gets "so in love" with finding new ones that he tends to forget what got him interested in the pursuit of the vine in the first place. This statement came in light of he and I enjoying pairing different foods with the Rhone wine last night.

2. In light of Christmas being in the next couple of days, I have put up a new "Holiday Poll" on what wine readers of this blog might be partaking in (provided you're having ham). I know many people have Roast Beef or Turkey. Ham is a tough one to pair with wine. Like the turkey, Pinot Noir is the favorite of many a wine shop owner as a pairing for ham. I will be drinking Pinot Noir because The Bro purchased a couple of special ones which I will review in a few days.

3. This is a blog that I am acutely aware is supposed to be for those on a budget. I realize much of what I've reviewed recently has not been "cheap". But I have been blessed enough with friends and family who gift me with more expensive wines on occasion. Please don't let that turn you away. Just put the info under your hat for a rainy day when you may find yourself able to spend a bit more on a special occasion. Then, may you remember what was good.

4. Check out The Bro below partaking in the second bottle of the evening. He's making a very poignant point!

5. I like my Christmas music all month long with my dinner wine. I hate my traditional favorites (Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Doris Day, Johnny Mathis, Bing Crosby, Glenn Miller, etc.) being replaced by the likes of Madonna, Whitney Houston, Run DMC, etc., etc., etc. I tend to stick to the originals and don't like anything new. But Harry Connick, Jr. has succeeded in moving me beyond and has given me a new favorite that feels like an oldie. See the end below.


Arboleda
Carmenere
2005
Colchagua Valley, Chile

Will drink again - This is a deal for the price.

My brother has arrived for the Christmas Holiday and he has brought a case of wine. We first opened the Carmenere late afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it on its own. It's bouquet was of smokey cherry. It was very fruit forward on initial taste and then it heated up a bit before leaving with a slightly creosote-like finish.

The Bro and I agreed that we notice an interesting creosote-light smoke finish on many of the Chilean wines we've had.

Very enjoyable and highly recommended for the price.

8.25 out of 10
$12.99 / 750 ml. bottle
14.5% alc. by vol.

Chateau Saint-Jean
Chateauneuf-Du-Pape
2005
France
85% grenache
15% Syrah

Will drink again.

Tis the season for nutcrackers and chocolate. This red wine
was very good on its own, with freshly cracked nuts, with hot pepper jelly, well aged Cheddar cheese, with our swiss chicken dinner, herb stuffing, and sweet potato, and absolutely awesome with a piece of Hershey's dark chocolate.

The bouquet was very earthy with a hint of berry. The flavor was more of a generic berry followed quickly by earthiness (which I like) and then (for me) sort of a disappointing watered down finish. I don't know why, but French wines just do that to me. They smell like they're going to be great, they can even start out great, but then they finish weak. HOWEVER, once we started experimenting with the chocolate, this wine was great for me. Both The Bro and I immediately tasted chocolate cherry in the wine when it followed the chocolate. I also tasted tobacco. The finish was there when it wasn't before. And it was definitely cherry versus any other berry. Very good and fun to experiment with.

8.5 out of 10
14.5% alc. by vol.
$32.29 / 750 ml bottle

My heart told me once before
To find my dream and search no more
And when my heart finds Christmas
I hope it finds you too

Harry Connick, Jr. (oh! be still my heart)
When My Heart Finds Christmas

Root: 1 Cab 2005

2005
Cabernet Sauvignon

Colchagua Valley, Chile

Will drink again (yet another good value - great taste for the money).

The Guy and I have had Root: 1 before and enjoyed it, but it was prior to posting our blog. So I decided to revisit it this weekend on a whim when I saw it for $9.99. I smelled and tasted . . . "Hot Rocks" - not The Rolling Stones, mind you, just hot rocks. This is an awesome experience. I've had it before with another previously reviewed wine (Terra Bossa 2004 Cabernet), but not as strong as this. It is definitely an "earthy" taste but taken to the next level. It really reminds me of granite warmed by the sun. I believe this is different, however, than a "mineral" experience. Which, brings me to my next reflection: the mineral survey. Thank you to those of you who participated. Next time I'll let a survey run without deadline.

The November issue of Wine Enthusiast (http://www.wineenthusiast.com/) has an article by Tim Patterson on the last page: Rocks In My Head - The rule in trying to grasp the elusive concept of minerality is, fake it 'till you taste it.

Mr. Patterson basically writes that he at first tasted minerality everywhere in every wine, trying hard to understand it. He even attended seminars related to geology and vineyard cross-sections and soil samples. He then checked the science behind it and seems to have succumbed to believing it's mostly "hooey". Some of what he had to say is summarized below:

"Nothing in winedom is more prized than the miracle of minerality. This elusive characteristic, found only in certain wines and discernible only to selected palates, carries a potent symbolic charge: tasting minerality is tasting the living soil that gave birth to grapes.

There's a good chance, of course, that minerality is mostly hooey.

First of all, people have the darndest time agreeing on what 'minerality' is . . . flavor, aroma, a texture?

Then there's the little problem that rocks don't taste or smell at all . . . (yet here he mentions his friends' contradictions) My mineral-centric buddies explained, with some condescension, that wet rocks clearly do have a smell - even a hosed-down sidewalk gives off a scent.

It gets worse. Modern plant biology holds that flavors and aromas are manufactured within the grapes through photosynthesis, not transported up from the ground into the berries.

More likely, according to state-of-the-art research, what gets called minerality is some combination of acidity and sulfur compounds."

I don't know exactly what minerality is or isn't. But I can tell you that I do indeed believe it exists. It is very exciting for me when I taste a wine that's got it. It only happened to me for the first time in the last couple of months and it's happened maybe three times total since. It was definitely a new experience for me and, I would say it was a textural thing when it happened. For lack of a better term, the wine "softened" all of a sudden in the finish. And it was pretty awesome.

For me, Root: 1 smelled exactly as it tasted. I knew when I smelled it that it was going to give me that "hot rocks" taste. I did not taste a lot of fruit - slight cherry in the beginning followed by spicey earthiness and warm stone with a lingering finish. But, alas, there was no mineral experience here.

Robert Parker gave this wine a 90 rating.

8.25 out of 10
$9.99 / 750 ml bottle
14% alc. by vol.
http://www.root1wine.com/