4th of July Wines Video Transcript
Written By: Anonymous on Mon, Dec 4th 2006
Brian Freedman: Welcome to the Weekly Wines Showdown brought to you by ClassicWines.com. I am your host Brian Freedman, and this week we decided to do a homage to 4th of July.
A lot of people seem to think you have to drink cheap beer or really, really cold white wine at your 4th of July barbeque, idea being, you need alcohol to get through the family barbeque no matter what, so why not just make it cheap? Truth of the matter is, there are some great red wines out there for your barbeques, and I like nothing better this time of year in terms of red for that purpose than a good Cotes du Rhone. I think it offers great value, I think the flavors are fantastic with the kind of barbeque foods that most people eat, and you can serve them with a little bit of chill; 55 to 60 degrees on a nice, light Cotes du Rhone, absolutely perfect and refreshing.
Two interesting wines today, both from the 2005 Vintage. The first one is the Jaboulet-Vercherre Cotes du Rhone Chassy and the other one is the Paul Jaboulet Aine Cotes du Rhone Parallele 45. Both of them, like I said, from 2005, both of them less than $10. So let's see how this first one goes; I am excited to try these today. That's a good swirl, wow!
Alright, people always talk about wines having to be imbalanced; this wine is a classic example of a wine that's not imbalanced. To me, the alcohol jumps right out - and when I was at Penn State this was a good thing, because if you could smell the alcohol, you knew it was going to do the trick. Has it grown up? - Not so much. It almost burns the nose when you are smelling it; and you can also smell a lot of, like cracked black pepper. You know when you go to a restaurant, the waiter sits there with the pepper and cracks it over your salad? It reminds me a whole lot of that. So, let's see if we get any of that on the palate.
Very, very hot - and what I mean by that is the alcohol, you could feel by teeth - you know that burning sensation you feel when you have that shot of vodka or 2:00 if that's how you roll. I am feeling that going down here; even though I didn't swallow it, my mouth is really sort of tingling from it. I am tasting some licorice in there - not Twizzlers, like the real black licorice, which is interesting; alcohol is just killing it for me.
So, let's try the Parallele 45. This is a good standard everybody keeps this around. I keep half a case of Cotes du Rhone in my cellar all the time. See now, this one smells more lush, more round; I am getting ripe or redberry fruit on there. It smells very typical of a Grenache-based red wine. Grenache is the grape. To me, it smells a whole like the pizza spices like the dried tomatoes with Oregano and Basil you get at the pizza shop? - Very typical of this style of wine.
Much better; much more imbalanced, the alcohol is there, obviously its wine, but its not overpowering anything. The tannins don't feel like they're going to rip the enamel off my teeth; it's a whole lot smoother and rounder, but it's not boring. It still tastes like a Cotes du Rhone.
Absolutely no question this week which one the winner is. It's the 2005 Paul Jaboulet Aine Cotes du Rhone Parallele 45 without a doubt. Truth of the matter is though, when it comes to wines like this, they're inexpensive, they're easy to drink, you throw a little chill on them and you're good to go; they're great with 4th of July or barbeque type food, but at end of the day, truth is, don't get yourself all worked up. It's just grape juice.
For the Weekly Wines Showdown, brought to you by ClassicWines.com, I am Brian Freedman. Cheers.
