Triples

Tried three wines the other night and they were all fabulous and different.

The Muga Rioja 2005 Especial was awesome. A red wine that was slow to open up, but after and hour or two of air time, it was elegant and smooth and rich and fruity and smokey, but not as smokey as the last wine. As nice as it was, it needs more years in the bottle to develop more complexity of flavors. It was the best with the smoked pork ribs. Retail is about 50.

The Selvanova Aglianico from southern Italy was the steal of the night at $19.99 a bottle. This wine has a little cult following at the store, but I admit, I hadn't tasted it in a long time. Don't worry, I bought everything the wholesaler had left in Massachusetts. Worry, he only had 3 cases left and one of the gentlemen who tasted the wine with me the other night, took one of them. Aglianico is the best red grape in southern Italy. It yields a wine that has southern Italian fruit to compliment a red sauce dish, yet enough spice and structure to stand up to northern Italian cuisine. It was delicious with no breathing time at all, and held its flavors thru the night.
I repeat, a steal, but not much left.

Finally, Vacqueras is a town in the Rhone Valley of France the until a change in the wine laws could only be labeled as Cotes du Rhone Villages. This 2007 vintage Vacqueras at $29.99 is expensive for any red wine from this town, but this one is more than worth it. Unfortunately, this was a cradle robbing event. Although the wine was delicious, you know it is only gonna get better the longer you can wait and leave it alone in the cellar. How long? It was so good, I will re-evaluate it this holiday season, but I have lots. A couple of years should metamorphasize this wine from wonderful to SPECTACULAR! Wafts of dried red fruit without sweetness in combination with so much basalm notes I thought I was lumberjacking in Maine. This is the wine that answers the oft asked queston "Bob, I wanna buy a wine that is gonna taste like a hundred bucks in a few years but I dont want to spend that much, what do you have?" This is it! I just loved sipping this the entire evening, food was secondary. Wine is tooooo good.