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Wine Review: 2007 Domaine Le Garrigon Vin de Pays

chris wrote this on February 7, 2009

2007 Domaine Le Garrigon Vin de Pays des Portes de la Méditerranée

Blend- 60% Syrah / 40% Grenache
$9.00 @ Wine Authorities (Durham)

Welcome back to my third installment of wine reviewing here at TriangleVino.com. Today we have a wine from Craig and Seth at Wine Authorities in Durham. They are wonderful guys and very knowledgeable so I encourage you to stop by and check out their store!

Before I get to the wine review, lets do a little label decoding here. Vin de Pays des Portes de la Méditerranée basically means that the grapes for this wine were not grown in one of France’s “classified” areas like Burgundy, Bordeaux, or Cotes du Rhone, but rather in a “declassified” Vin de Pays area (literally meaning country wine). The “des Portes de la Méditerranée” area is in the southeast of France, along the Mediterranean Sea and the Alpine border with Italy.

I have had this wine a few times and I recommend decanting or you will have to wait until you pour your third glass for this wine to fully open up. Its an “old world” style wine, very rustic and unpolished in its delivery. If you like the big jammy fruit bombs of Australia and America you may not like this style of wine. The more you drink it the more you discover from it. The more it makes you think. You might even hate it at first but end up falling in love with your last sip.

The nose is very intense; concentrated black cherry with floral notes, traces of strawberry and anise all wrapped around the smoky-meaty tones that I love from Syrah.

The palate is just as old world and rustic as the nose. There is fresh black cherry tartness intermixing with black licorice along with metallic tang of iron or copper. Maybe some blood as well, like someone punched you in the nose and it drips down the back of your throat (my nose bled easily as a child). The lengthy finish has dry tannins that remind me of cherry skins, like you just shoved a handful of cherries into your mouth and are trying to chew them up and swallow before your mother finds out what you did.

Medium bodied, great acidity and enough tannins to stand up to meat dishes or even hard cheeses. I paired this with a savory beef stew that really brought out the anise character in the wine.

I rate this wine an A on style and quality. The finish could have been smoother, but if you are fan of rustic, old world Cotes du Rhone, Vacqureyes, or even Gigondas this wine will blow you away for the price you paid! Thats an A+ on value, and a solid all around “A-for-effort” overall rating.

This wine easily drinks like a $20 bottle and puts many domestic wines at the $10 price point to shame. This is truly that old world style that many European winemakers struggle to get out of their wines. This is a blue collar wine that shows up every day, lunch pail in hand, ready for work. You can literally taste the effort in making this wine, even the iron in the soil where the grapes are grown. This is what wines in California tasted like before the corporations took over. Next time you feel like grabbing a wine from the grocery store or a bulk warehouse, I urge you to put down the bottle of generic Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and visit Craig and Seth at Wine Authorities. You will not be disappointed.

Until next wine! -Chris

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