Wine #2- Grenache

I was so looking forward to this week as the grenache grape is one of my favourites. And this wine did not let me down!

This week I tried Las Rocas from the San Alejandro vineyard in Spain. The vintage year is 2007 and was purchased for $19.95 from Vines Riverbend Wine Merchants. This wine was given 91 points by Robert Parker.

The grenache grape produces a wine that is very low in acidity and is considered a super heavyweight. In my opinion, the wine is just plain super.

I opened the bottle of wine and let it breathe while I cooked my meal. Tonight's meal was Montreal peppered steak with broccoli florets and jumbo shrimp with cocktail sauce. I had a long week and wasn't really into cooking a big dinner. So simple surf n' turf it was.

Let's put it this way. I had two glasses of wine with the meal and had a third even when dinner was log gone. I can't say enough how much I loved this wine. Often wines can leave an aftertaste in your mouth (such as the Chardonnay) but this one leaves nothing behind making it a very easy wine to drink. It is a dry wine. Its flavours are soft and subtle and this bottle had just enough hints of fruits, such as strawberry to make it a very pleasant drink.

As my brother put it (I kept a glass for him and brought it to him on Saturday), the wine is subtle and creates "the right type of spit" (I have no idea what that means but he assures me it's a good thing!). Not a red wine drinker, he had no problems sipping this wine before heading out to the hot tub.

The red wine paired nicely with the steak and even though seafood is typically a white wine food, I didn't mind at all drinking the wine while chomping down on my shrimp.

The grenache wine is a very enjoyable wine and I would recommend it to anyone who isn't a fan of red wines to try it and see why red wines can be so pleasant to the palette.

I also have another recommendation for a grenache wine. I do put a warning on this wine-- I drank a bottle of it in less than 40 minutes it's that good! Try the Fire Block Dry Grenache Rose (2006). Just make sure you don't have to drive anywhere after!

Next week I'm going to tackle the Riesling.