Grape Varietal – Tasting – Grenache

Grape Varietal – Tasting – Grenache

            The wine that I chose to taste for this grape was the Bitch Grenache. The region that this grape comes from is the Barossa Valley in Austrailia. It was a bottle I received from my mother as a gift in a gift basket during the holidays. The vintage of this grape was 2007.  The bottle was approximately $11.99, 100% Grenache, and the bottle was purchased from a Wine and Spirits store in Pennsylvania. I would suggest that this wine be paired with a heavy pasta in heavy cream sauce or a flavorful dish that has heavy cheeses or cream.

            This wine was very dark and bold in color. It is a very dark red. It is a very dark blood red. Sitting in the glass it looks to be purple but as I swirled it it showed its true red color. The aroma of the wine is very strong and stung my nose whenever I took a wiff. It was so pungent that I could almost taste the wine whenever I took sniffs of it. The smell of the wine became slightly less intense after a couple times of swirling the wine and allowing it to open up and lose some of its concentrated factors. However, it was still incredibly powerful regardless of that fact that it got slightly better (it was still stinging my nose).

            From what I could gather from the aroma was a lot of dark fruits. It was very strong of dark cherries and raspberries, some peach, a lot of spices, hint of tobacco, and every once in a while I would get a little hint of chocolate. It has a very high alcohol content so I’m not sure I need to say that I couldn’t smell much around the powerful smell of alcohol.

            The first sip was incredibly overpowering. It was as if every influence of alcohol went straight to my jaw and it hurt. It made my jaw clench, my face squinched up, my lips puckered and my tongue stung. I did not like the taste of this wine and I did not want to continue drinking this wine after the first sip. My palate is too immature for this sort of wine and I didn’t want to keep trying to improve it, because I really didn’t see that happening.

            The astringency of the wine was rough and I did not really appreciate anything that was going on with this wine, other than the fact that it had a high alcohol percentage (15.5%) and the description on the bottle was just the word ‘Bitch’ forty-two times. I could detect some sweet aspects to this wine, but not very much. The taste was entirely too overwhelming and was really strong on the sides of my tongue. I couldn’t detect any fruits through the taste, but I could taste the spices and tobacco aspects. There was also a strong pepper sense. There seemed to be no real balance in the acidity level, so that was one more thing on the list for me to be overwhelmed by.

            I found the wine to be overall just completely unpleasant and tart. It really stung my tongue and jaw in a way I’ve never experienced before and I did not enjoy that part at all.

            This wine is a particularly difficult to grow grape that are yielded from a 25-year-old vine that is grown in sand over clay. It is un-oaked and can also sometimes be made in Aragon or Navarra, Spain. The climate for the production of this wine is very cold winters and hot, dry summers. It is important to be very gentle with handling during the primary fermentation and pay close attention to the to the soft pressing of the fermented grape skins. The best fruit flavor and acid balance at harvest comes from the cleanest and slower ripened grapes during winemaking.