As much as I love the color pink, I am quite picky when it comes to rosé wines. In general, I don’t like my wines sticky-sweet or too fruit forward. So it can be a challenge for me to find and enjoyable rosé — especially at a local grocery store. Enter Chateau de Campuget 2015 Rosé…
Here I am, still going strong with my French wine kick. A heads up, this is going to be one of my first critical reviews, but it’s all in good spirit I assure you….
I feel like I need to give some back story. When I was I bought this wine I had a specific flavor profile in mind. I wanted something with a soft mouthfeel, something oaked (but not oaky) that would lessen the severity of any potentially dominating fruit flavors. I guess I wanted Chardonnay and Sauv Blanc to have a baby. I had a few different varietals in mind, but apparently they were too obscure for my local shop. Very sad. Now, I kind of knew when I picked up the 2015 Bordeaux Blanc from Ducasse that this wine wouldn’t quite fit the brief, but I took a chance, gave it a go, and here’s what I learned.
I will not lie to you, I was intrigued by the name, the label, and the poem on the back of this wine. Maybe I was in a place of needing patience, poise, or something just plain pretty. Well I got all of that with True Myth’s 2014 Chardonnay.
After my visit to Bonny Doon’s Davenport tasting room where I got to chat one-on-one with owner and winemaker Randall Grahm — which was both fun and educational — I couldn’t help but go home with, what I thought, was the most outstanding wine of the 12 I tasted that day: 2011 Le Cigare Blanc.
True story: I was perusing the wine aisles at Costco looking for my fav generic red blend when a Costco employee stopped to ask if he could help. Turns out they didn’t have what I was looking for. “But,” he says, “if you like that, you’ll love Tractor Shed Red.”
I kinda looked at him like he was crazy-go-nuts. The thing you have to know about me is that I find blends — of any kind — hard. In my experience, everyday blends found at the local shops with cute, funky labels listed at under $20 tend to be…imbalanced. Imbalanced in aroma, taste, texture, and ultimately enjoyability.
So the fact that I even had, what I’d call, a “favorite” red blend was kind of a big deal — and I was willing to deal with the fact that they did not have it in stock. But the Tractor Shed Red price was right for experimenting, so I took a bottle home. Now, every time I go to Costco, I take two.