Saturday, February 16, 2013

Mountain Spirits: WIne Tasting today at Asheville's Appalachian Vintner

February 16 2013, 3 PM - 7 PM at  Appalachian Vintner, 745 Biltmore Avenue Suite 121 in Asheville NC,  welcomes Robert Kral, owner of Robert Walters Selections for "Asheville's Best Wine Taisting". Robert was the wine director of Bouchon  in Asheville for years prior to opening his own import company. The portfolio is comprised of a handful of mainly small growers from Europe. This Saturday's tasting  showcase the wines of Domain Rouge Bleu.

Domain Rouge Bleu is made from very old vines from Sainte Cécile les Vignes, near Cairanne, on a great terroir mainly composed of pebbles and gravels from a old river bed. The winery is located on a 400 year old farm with techniques based upon bio-dynamic principles, harvesting beautiful grapes at very low yields. Wine making happens with natural yeasts, with minimum sulfites with the whole in concrete porous tanks. The wine is aged in tanks and in neutral barrels, producing 32, 000 most of which are exported.

The wines to be tasted are:

Dentelle Rosé : The name (Dentelle) is a play on words as we are facing Dentelles de Montmirail and as “Dentelle”, which means lace in English is a good way to describe this smooth and light wine made from Grenache and Carignan.

Dentelle Red : In the same spirit of the rosé, this red is made to be a refreshing wine. Carignan has this natural ability to bring freshness and Grenache will bring the body of the wine. This wine can be drunk young, on the fruit side and even a bit cool. With a bit of aging, it turns into more minerality with some spices and gamy flavors.

Mistral Red : Just a couple days before the start of the first harvest in 07, a strong Mistral wind blew all night and eventually made a lot of very mature clusters fall on the ground, resulting in an earlier picking. The full body, rich and powerful wine made from these very old vines was eventually named after this famous wind which describes quite well the wine.

Lunatique Red : The grapes for this wine were processed  separately on a spur of the moment decision  to move some grapes in fermentation (which can be very dangerous) to get an empty tank. This “Lunatique” decision gave the name to the wine.

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