For various reasons I have the pleasure of trying a variety of quality wines in the run-up to Christmas. So I thought it worthwhile to compile and post some tasting notes: hopefully there'll be a follow up post with more in early January!
Les Clos Montirius 2005 Vacqueyras
Thick tannins, sweet blackcurrant and a little cherry with a good hit of black pepper. Ends with a swirl of smoke and bitter berries. It has the usual rich, thick port-ish quality that you find in wines from the Southern Rhone but less intense: the result is a wine strangely balanced between worlds but which remains quite a distinctive experience.
Simone-Febvre 2008 St Bris
I'd had the Chablis from this produce before and been favourably impressed, so I was very willing to give this (an unknown appelation to me) a try. The essence of this wine is rather like drinking lime cordial mixed with fresh, clean mineral water from a mountain stream. There's some elderflower and gooseberry too but the experience is centrally about feeling like you're being pelted with lime and gravel - startling, occasionally painful but strangely refreshing.
Tomero Cabernet Sauvignon Valle de Uco Mendoza 2007
This is a strange wine for me since it start with a little effervescence and some overly-tart acid, aspects I'd more normally associate with a white than a red. But from a poor start it improves a great deal, offering a spectrum of red fruit which clearly includes raspberry, strawberry as well as the usual Cabernet blackcurrant. Tannins are well balanced and the wine ends on some earthy tobacco flavours to compliment the fruit nicely. Good value.
Vallobera Crianza Rioja 2006
This has a big smell of vanilla to envelop your senses before you take a swig. The wine feels smooth, creamy and well balanced in the mouth and this is very much a wine which is as much about texture as it is about flavour. And yet it certainly delivers in that department too: some unusually hot spice for the region with big rich red fruit flavours emerging underneath. Not distinctive, perhaps, but a quality example of the style.