Freakout. of. the. week.  !!!

I’m actually still freaking out, and I first tasted this wine on Wednesday.  It’s a freakout that can only be caused when a wine is extremely delicious AND extremely affordable.  And it couldn’t be better timed- we tend to overspend during the Holiday season, and this wine will firmly re-plant you back to reality, where we live within our means, and- SHOCKER!  our means CAN be amazingly delicious!  It’s like finding out your life really isn’t so bad.  Why desire a life where you can spend $50 on a bottle of wine and drink it on a Wednesday while you watch Modern Family?  Who has that life?  No one.  Well, a few people do.  Are they happier than you?  No.  We all live delightfully average lives, full of mundane activities.  But then this wine comes along and at $12 a bottle, is completely un-average and un-mundane!  So read on!

For anyone who doesn’t know, Kermit Lynch is sort of a boss.  He first opened a retail wine shop in California in 1972, right on the cusp of  the California wine explosion.  I don’t have a exact timetable, but he soon began importing and distributing wine, and developed an excellent reputation especially with French wines.  If I had to surmise, he might have been one of the first Americans to make French wine accessible and not scary.  Which is pretty cool.  Here’s the link to his website if you want to check out more about him.

Here’s the image that is found on all his wines, which became (and still is) an easy, identifiable way for wine shoppers to be sure they’re getting a high quality wine, even if they hadn’t tried it before.  Moving on to the fun part!  This Vaucluse Rouge is a blend of 55% Grenache, 20% Syrah, 15% Merlot and 10% Marselan (remember that one?  a funny grape I wrote about earlier this year?  or maybe it was last year…).  Vaucluse, to the best of my google-ing ability, is a little south of Rhone and a little north of Provence.  Which accounts for it’s interesting and fun grape makeup.  It’s a lush a velvety little wine with a firm palate of blackberries and black cherries.  A hint of violets, cedar, and anise are found on the nose, but it’s the finish that really gets me- a perfect amount of salinity/limestoney-minerality/acidity make this a true lip-smacker.  Smooth, classy, and can’t be beat price.  The bottle even looks sophisticated!  You could definitely fool someone into thinking you paid at least $20 for this wine, if you really wanted to.  But I would only reserve that kind of thinking for someone you didn’t really like.  Because your true friends will appreciate that you only paid $12.  And if they don’t- well, get some new friends.  Not to be harsh.

this was supposed to show you what a pretty color this wine is, but really doesn't do it justice.

You can find this wine open at tomorrow’s Giant Wine Sale from 12-2!  Yes, there’s one again this weekend- since the last Saturday in December is Christmas Eve, we decided just to throw down and have a sale every other Saturday in December.  We have about a case and a half to sell, and I anticipate it will go rather quickly.  Other yummy choices tomorrow include the St. Francis Red (now they call it the “Splash”, which I think is silly), always a decent house red for $9, the Ostatu Crianza- another fave of mine, lots n’ lots of Charmeroy Brut Rose (you know you need some), and several other newbies that I will leave to the element of surprise.

If I can keep my act together next week, I’ll be posting a “Favorite Wines of 2011” entry, which I know you’re all just dying to hear about.  But it’ll be fun, at least.  And keep an eye out in The Shop Tart next week, as she filmed a Shop Tart Tuesday segment about the perfect Holiday Case of Wine here at Cellar this morning.  Should be a good one!  Happy drinking!