Beach Week Highlights

Every year my family gathers from the far corners of the US to converge on the beach for a week, there is a lot of drinking involved. Some of the wine highlights.

2009 Clos Roche Blanche gamay
The first bottle was tight, more tannic and mineral but the second bottle was stunning. Stop you in your tracks gorgeous with layers of fruit buttressed by the structure and that whispy nose I get from CRB gamay that screams naturalness to me. This is a great wine.

2009 Damien Coquelet Beaujolais-Villages
Fresh, vibrant, and a great coif without any of the three bottles being particularly memorable.

2009 J-P Brun Beaujolais l’Ancien
The one bottle of this I tried was fairly tightly wound, much like the first bottle of CRB gamay. Given my experience with the synthetic closure I would drink this sooner rather than later and won’t be loading up.

2009 Pepière Muscadet & 2009 Clos Roche Blanche pineau d’aunis rosé
Yes & yes. Emphatically. Duh.

2009 Three Trees (Tom Lubbe) Côte Catalanes Blanc
This is a blend of rolle and macabeu, IIRC. I am a huge fan of this wine and I’m generally not a fan of white Rhônes and below. In fact, I’m pretty much a fan of all of Tom’s wines even if the labels make them look Australian.

2006 Sanguineto Vino Nobile di Montepulciano
A very interesting wine. Clearly sees a decent amount of time in casks of some kind as the color is a translucent ruby. Fragrant and elegant and almost willfully Victorian. A racous dinner with grilled steaks was probably not the best setting for such a wine, but I was so intrigued that I snagged the remaining bottle to take home and assess at a more leisurely pace.