Wow what a week this has been. Some things bad (reorganisation stress at the company I work for) and some things good.
And the good things are of course the things I'd like to share here. :)
Last wednesday I had a craving for a decent bottle of wine and to my horror found out I had 2 bottles left at home. (I keep most of my wines I want to store for a couple of years in a cellar at a friends place since my place doesn't have possibilities for wine storage and I expect to buy a house in half a year). I had the choice between a '99 Morey St Denis 1er Cru by Dujac (I really should place that one in the cellar SOON) and a '99 Vinos de Gain Rioja by Altadi.
I decided to open up the Altadi. As if my girlfriend knew I was going to open up a decent bottle she came home with some old dutch cheese (old gouda style). Darkyellow and crumbly. It was a perfect match.
The Vinas de Gain was much better than I expected. The color was still pretty purple and had a nice deep tone. Around the edges a small brownish glaze appeared, but this was hardly noticable. It seems like the wine hasn't aged a lot yet. The nose was intense and the fruit tones came splashing out of the glass. (dark berries, cherry, cassis) Taste was indeed extremely fruity and in balance with the nose. Two things surprised me. The first was the high acidity of the wine. I thought this would be much less, but it was a delight to taste because it was also very much in balance with the sweet fruit tones. The second was the absence of tough bitterdry tannins, the tannins found in the wine gave the wine a good fleshy structure but didn't dry it out. Most Rioja's I remember from other houses often had these very tough tannins making the wine hard to drink when young. This Rioja seems to be highly enjoyable when drunk relatively young. This wine deserves a B/B- and at only $15 a steal.
My Grade System:
A: Wines you rave about for years to come B: Excellent wine, bottle finished before you know it C: Decent wine. For your average drinking pleasure D: Not a bad wine but not very exciting E: Rip off or typical bad supermarket wine