2009 The Vac Vacqueyras, France

I have been toying with this wine for the better part of 4 months, each time grasping a bottle, setting it in my cart only to go back and set it back on the shelf. But after reading through the spring Total Wine & More mailer, I finally decided to purchase a bottle. Rated 92 points by the International Wine Cellar, this wine features strawberry and cherry aromas with nuances of plum and pepper wafting from the rim of a ruby rimmed, dark purple pour. The wine is quite fruit forward, with notes of plum, blackberry and raspberry and lingering hints of cola and smoke. The mid-palate is nicely acidic, bringing up bright textures and a slight pucker factor with subdued tannins and astringency. In my opinion, this wine shines during the finish; pouring on loads of dark, smoky blackberry, black currant and plum with vanilla, leather, pepper and something akin to flower petals. These flavors swirl together mixing in a dark dance of dark fruit, then savory spices and finishes with wood and smoke characteristics. This is a medium bodied wine with cherry vanilla, oak and rose hips. This is a wonderfully complex wine, though it tries to trick you and make you think it is a nice fruit forward “California” red; in reality, it is a textured French red with earthy characteristics that mask the relatively sweet fruits thus transforming a potentially bland, one dimensional Rhone blend into something elegant, compelling and very satisfying.

Overall, I am not a huge fan of Rhone blends as they tend to be more fruit forward than I like; however this wine balances its sugars with equal helpings of spice and earth. It makes up for its shortcomings by providing a very broad range of flavors that blend nicely together leaving me quite satisfied. I don’t often seek out “sweet” French reds, but this would definitely make my list of must haves for rounding out your wine cellar. A bottle of The Vac will please most discerning wine drinkers that stop by for Coq au Vin, Beef Burgundy or a myriad of other savory dishes. It earns a good QPR and a recommendation from me.

Arnoux & Files Vins des Cotes du Rhone 

2006 Yangarra Cadenzia (68% Grenache, 27% Shiraz, 5% Mourvedre), Australia

Colored with three Crayola crayons…Ruby red fading evenly to garnet with flecks of black in the core

A lovely bouquet of…Black cherry, blackberry, plum, sugar

My tongue tells me…I don’t usually purchase Rhone Blends or any wine that features Grenache or Mourvedre. The reason being; I think they taste sweet. Yes I am using the term sweet, not fruit forward or “fruit bomb”; I think GSM’s taste sweet and cloying. This was recommended as I was purchasing the Wirra Wirra Catapult Shiraz/Voignier; now I know why. That particular Shiraz is “sweeter” than I would have liked, and this is a wine along the same lines. All of this begs the answer, is it a good wine and worth the buy? Setting aside my dislike for sweeter red wines, I will attempt to review this wine. It is a very smooth wine from start to finish, which is the only thing I like about sweeter red wines they tend to remove the tannins that might make the wine less palatable. This wine is the definition of a smooth, sweeter, dark red wine. The attack is all sugared dark berries and stone fruit; black cherry, blackberry, plum, raisin and grape. These flavors taste good even to me as they take on a slightly caramel/molasses flavor and blend into a very warm mid-palate. The mid-palate is nicely warm from the alcohol, not overly acidic and marginally astringent; creating a pleasant but minor segue from attack to finish. The finish is long in length and personified by more black cherry, blackberry and plum flavors, but now they are brought down to earth and tempered by some alcohol heat and flavors of crème brulee, vanilla and leather. This is a medium bodied wine, just edging into full bodied territory with an aftertaste of fresh plums mixed with wet leather.

Overall, this was originally priced at 20 dollars; yikes! But it was on sale for 10 dollars the day I purchased it. Is it worth 20 dollars? I don’t really know as I don’t have anything to judge this against. Is it worth 10 dollars? Very much so! I would say at 10 dollars this is nearly a great QPR, and a wine to purchase by the half case at least. Yes even though this is a rather sweet wine, it is very smooth and balanced, and moves nicely into an extremely pleasing finish that had me going back to the bottle for more as my glass emptied. I can’t review this wine against other GSM’s, but judging this wine on its own I would say this is a very nice wine; perhaps not worth 20 dollars but definitely worth more than 10.

Yangarra Estate Vineyard