WINE OF THE WEEK #018

Hi tumblr’s - I’ve tasted the third natural wine in April :

BLANC DE GARANCE, Côtes du Rhône villages - Garance 2009

This wine, as well as the previous one, is produced by the domain “Rouge garance”,located on the right bank of the Rhone river in the south-east of France where the soil consists of clay and chalk. Making a white wine in the Rhône region in France, you usually deal with marsanne, roussanne, grenache blanc and viognier. I don’t know if the winemakers had a specific reason, but they used 25% of these 4 varietals to build the wine. WINE DATASHEET

You can find the vineyard on my WINEMAP & let’s see what’s what.

Appearance
A very light, straw colour.

Nose
A subtle nose, I find the common pear & honey notes from the Rhône whites, along with a fresh minerality, some lemon & banana. It smells a bit salty as well, hard to describe…

Taste
I struggled with the mouthfeel on this one and had several sips before writing some notes down. The acidity is ok, and I’ve got the feeling the wine is about to be spritsy, without being it. Like you drink a soda when the bubbles are gone. It’s a bit heavy structured, which is maybe just another description of the same feeling. There is some white pepper spicyness, almost covering the alcohol level of 13,5% …

Finish
The finish reminds me of Rambol, a creamy cheese with a strong walnut flavour.

I don’t really know about this wine. It shows the characteristics of a Northern Rhône wine really well, but I’ve got the feeling they where not used properly to enhance the final product. Using 25% of each grape maybe shows that the winemakers don’t really have a defined direction with this wine. Let’s call it a silver medal.