#12- Carmenere

So it's been a little while since I've blogged and I have an awful lot of wines to catch up on! I knew I'd be a little behind with my trip to Europe in April. What I didn't anticipate was the extra week's vacation I was handed from a little volcano in Iceland! An extra six days in Budapest at the end of my three weeks away and well, my life was thrown off.

Not trying to make excuses, in fact- I've had lots of reason to celebrate in the last month. My sister Kristin had her second child, a girl she and her husband Mark named Quinlan May. Just a week later, my brother Jim welcomed his son Liam James, his first into the world.

And I've also had some amazing company staying with me the last few weeks as well. She's one heck of a wine drinker too. So excuses aside, I'm way behind. I've got two blogs to write in the next two days and then it's double up time! That's right- for me to get back on track, I basically have to drink 2 wines a week for the next 13 weeks or so. The challenge is on. Now back to the wine...

The Carmenere is a red wine (carmenere means crimson in french) originally from France. Now rarely found there, Chile is one of the largest producers of the carmenere grape. The wine we tasted is indeed from Chile. Vina Chocolan in the Maipo valley. This carmenere is part of their regular selection wine. It is also the first screw top wine I've selected (will have to find a cork to use with the label... more about that later).

We paired the wine with a barbequed steak dinner which Craig prepared. Quite the cook, he barbequed our steaks to perfection with side potato, avocado and greek salad. As you can see, the meal looked delicious and tasted just as good. The wine was a good pairing with the red meat and it didn't take us long to finish the bottle.
Now, did anything in particular stick out about this wine? Not really. It definitely had an earthy taste to it and it certainly didn't leave any lingering taste in my mouth. Perhaps their name threw me off a bit-- I was waiting for a chocolate taste to appear but alas, none did. There was definitely a berry taste so a slight sweetness to the wine as well. It was certainly one easy enough for us to drink but not one that stood out enough to put on a "recommend list". I have drank other carmeneres before and I do find them intriguing so it will certainly be a wine that I'll visit again.

Our next wine is a sweet wine- muscat!