Tag Archives: #MourvedreMonday

Mourvèdre Monday #30, Double-Feature: Vinavanti Mourvèdre & Rosé

Vinavanti is an urban winery in San Diego whose Black Label wines emphasize a natural winemaking approach. Knowing my interest in Mourvèdre-based wines, Eric Van Drunen was kind enough to provide two bottles as samples for review. Both the 2011 Mourvèdre and Clara Rosé, sourced from nearby Temecula Valley,  are hand-picked, native-fermentation, unfined/unfiltered, no sulfite wines. Au naturel, mes amis.

Let’s see what’s up.

Vinavanti 2011 Mourvèdre Temecula Valley (Summit Vineyard)

Nearly 100% Mourvèdre, with a little Grenache and Syrah

Dried fruit character — cherries and plums — infused with sweet tobacco. The flavors are rich and full, if a bit murky. Plump and weighty in the mouth with an impressively long finish, leaving a pleasant sense of coffee.

Vinavanti 2011 Clara Rosé Temecula Valley

50% Mourvèdre / 50% Grenache

An intriguingly smoky nose leads to a lively palate that manages to hint at berries, melon and citrus all at once. It all rides atop a lovely combed-cotton-textured mouthfeel, finishing dry and reasonably long. Very nice.

I enjoyed getting to try these Temecula wines, my first Mourvèdre wines from this appellation as far as I can remember. I especially dug the Clara Rosé, a wine I’d happily enjoy through our long Texas summers.

Check out the Vinavanti website to see their full range of wines (which includes one other Mourvèdre-based wine, a GSM) as well as house wines available in refillable one liter bottles.

Note: These wines were provided as samples for review. 

 

Mourvèdre Monday #29: Merum 2009

A quick-hit #MourvedreMonday wine…

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Merum 2009 Monastrell – Jumilla

Dried cherry, raspberry, mossy earthiness and dried flowers. Rich, but with good acidity. This tasty and interesting little Jumilla is 85% Monastrell and 15% Syrah and well worth the $10.50 I paid for it. Grab a bottle if you come across it and let me know what you think.

Mourvèdre Monday #28: Bandol Rosé

With spring just around the corner, my pick for this Mourvèdre Monday is a lovely little Bandol rosé. Bandol, located within Provence, is France’s only wine region where Mourvèdre is the dominant grape. In other words, heaven. I couldn’t find the exact varietal composition of this bottle, but the Bandol AOC regulations require at least 50% Mourvèdre in its red and rosé wines (the rest most often Grenache and/or Cinsault).

Château des Baumelles 2010 Bandol Rosé

The gorgeous coral pink color of this wine entices before the first sniff. Citrus and red fruit drive the nose and palate, with a nice mineral core and plenty of twangy, bright acidity. In fact, one might just call it lip-smackingly good. I wish I had more of this for the Austin spring/summer ahead. If you see some, grab it. Around $18-20. VINEgeek Approved.

 

Mourvèdre Roundup: February 2013

It’s the first #MourvedreMonday of the month, so here’s a roundup of Mourvèdre-related interestingness from the past month: February, the dwarf month. (I wonder if someday, February will be downgraded from full month status to “dwarf”, like poor ole Pluto.)

It’s intensely-flavoured, velvety wine, with aromas that subliminally hint at 6B pencils, Parade Gloss boot polish, and freshly-polished horse tack.  Its fruits are somewhere between the rooty-fruity fragrance of borscht – cool beetroot soup with yoghurt – and the meaty twang of blueberry.  Its flavours are somewhere between those fleeting notions, inked with the reek of times and tastes past: it’s nostalgic stuff, with soft tannins that remind me of the grainy images in old movies.  It’s never heavy, jammy, or gloopy. It’s the sort of red I can drink in the morning, without food, just for its powerful memory triggers.  I could have it instead of lunch, or with some, in which instance Wah Hing tea-smoked duck comes immediately to mind.  I could have it in the afternoon, with or without Alison Paxton’s exquisite Kangarilla Creamery goat cheese from next door, and then, come to think of it, I could have it with dinner, with dribbly lamb cutlets and mash.  In other words,  I recommend it.  Trust Unca Phil.

  • The Reverse Wine Snob tasted and liked the Tarima 2011 Monastrell, a $5.99 Costco find.
  • The March 31, 2013 Wine Spectator failed to call out a single varietal Mourvèdre in it’s annual California Rhone review. The full listing of 600+ wines with scores is available here. The highest scoring varietal Mourvèdre — if you’re into scores, that is — is the Cypher Mourvèdre Paso Robles El Pelon 2009 (90, $55). They made up for mostly snubbing Mourvèdre by running a Domaine Tempier/Bandol feature in the same issue. (I’ll not link to it because it’s behind a paywall.)
  • Speaking of Bandol, La Vigne reports that 4 hectares of Bandol AOC vineyard land is threatened by construction of a new stadium (unless my French is even weaker than I thought).

We can’t end on that note, so I’ll have to sneak back into the end of January for this…

Mourvèdre Monday #27: Turkey Flat 2006

It’s been quite a while since I’ve had a chance to taste a Barossa Mourvèdre for the intermittent yet persistent #MourvedreMonday series. I recently came across this bottle at a wine shop I hadn’t visited before. I’d heard of Turkey Flat before via my Mourvèdre-radar (i.e., hours on the internet), but hadn’t ever found a bottle on the shelf. So I was happy to find this one, with bonus points for a little bottle age.

Producer: Turkey Flat Vineyards

Grapes: 100% Mourvèdre

Appellation: Barossa Valley (Australia)

Vineyard: Turkey Flat Stonewell Block, a dry-farmed estate vineyard with limestone soil

Vintage: 2006

Winemaking: 20 months in new & seasoned French oak puncheons

Alcohol: 14.5%

Price: $32

My tasting notes: Deep, dark color. A bright raspberry note dominates the nose, but there’s an earthy complexity as well. It’s rich and full on the palate, with lifted red and black fruit that stays grounded by a sense of leather and spice. A bit of toasty oak. It finishes dry and grippy.

Overall impression: A nice spicy Barossa Mourvèdre that I’d happily drink again. This wine’s certainly no turkey. I hope to track down some other vintages of this wine and/or Turkey Flat’s GSM called Butchers Block Red.

 

Mourvèdre Monday #26 – Esprit de Beaucastel

I tasted this wine back in the summer, but never got around to blogging my notes. So I decided to dust them off for today’s Mourvèdre Monday post.

Tablas Creek 2008 Esprit de Beaucastel Rouge

Complex nose of cherry/raspberry fruit with a hit of coffee/mocha and mint. On the palate, it is mouth-filling without being overwhelming. It delivers earthy dark fruit and lightly grippy tannins and finishes with a bit of a mineral/minty lift. Fruit-forward, but balanced.
VINEgeek Verdict: Damn good.

38% Mourvèdre
30% Grenache
26% Syrah
6% Counoise

Coolio bona fides:

  • grapes from organic estate vineyard
  • fermented with native yeasts
  • aged in 1200-gallon French oak foudres

Price: $40-45

Mourvèdre Monday #27: My New Favorite Monastrell

I originally declared 2010 to be the Year of Mourvèdre, but my love of the grape knows no bounds, calendrical or otherwise. Here in 2012, the posts don’t come as often as they used to, but in honor of my recent business trip to Spain, here’s a review of my new favorite Monastrell (the Spanish name for Mourvèdre).

This wine retails for around $10-12 and is a great intro into Monastrell if you’re new to it — or for those who know and love the grape, it’s a good bulk buy. Have you tried this wine before? Leave a comment.

Search-friendly, cut-and-paste-friendly text: Olivares Altos de la Hoyas Monastrell 2008 Jumilla |Nose: Smoked cherries with a fresh vegetal note. Palate: High-toned blackberry fruit with good acidity and a touch of earthy minerality. Good, persistent finish. Overall: My new favorite Monastrell. Made my day. | Score: A-