HRM Rex Goliath Cabernet Sauvingnon

Wow... It's not even January 10th and already two posts on the wine blog! Not too shabby for a beer guy with a pregnant wife, eh?

But enough chit-chat; let's get on to the wine! I have a good friend at work who's teaching me about wine as I teach her about beer. Yeah, it's a pretty good gig. Anyway, right before Christmas she brought in this bottle with a rooster on it. She told me it's an awesome table wine and it usually clocks in below ten bucks. Now that's my kind of wine! And best of all, she gave me the bottle. Like I said, it's a good gig.

So today Leah made some pasta and meat sauce (or "linguini bolognese" if we want to sound fancy) and decided to bust out this bottle of HRM Rex Goliath Cabernet Sauvingnon. It poured a very dark ruby color. It smelled meaty, by which I mean not overly floral or fruity. For whatever reason, the nose told me this was going to be a hearty wine.

Turns out my nose was right... This was a pretty complex wine, especially for the price. The initial sweetness that hits your tongue is muted by an oaky dryness mixed with some tannins. You get the taste of stone fruit in the middle, but it quickly dissolves into notes of black pepper and a finish dry from tannins and alcohol. Leah quickly noted that it's a good thing we had this with a hearty meat sauce, as it likely would've overpowered lighter fare. (And on a side note, yes, my pregnant wife had a half glass of wine with dinner; the baby will be just fine.)

Overall, this wine definitely stood out and I'll be sure to seek out the other offerings from this winery, especially when there's nothing on sale that grabs my eye. If this were a $15 wine, I'd probably wait to find it on sale, but at $8 a pop, this qualifies as a buy it again on the patented Chibebräu Wine scale (skip it, only if it's on sale, or buy it again). Thanks for the bottle, Puja!

Saint-Hilaire Blanquette de Limoux Extra Dry Sparkling White Wine (2004)

(Those are strawberry bits in the glass on the left, in case you were wondering...)

I suppose it's only fitting that my first post of 2009 is a champagne sparkling white wine. Interestingly enough, though the Saint-Hilaire Blanquette de Limoux fails to qualify as a champagne because it comes from the wrong region of France, I found several sources that claim that monks were making this sparkling wine 150 years before the first "real" champagne. Sort of the Trappist ale of sparkling wines, I suppose... Snagged a bottle of the brut (extra dry) for $13 on my way home from work on New Year's Eve.

If you've read this blog before, you know I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to wine. That being said, I don't know if sparkling wines like this get a discount because they're not technically champagne, but I thought this drank way above its price tag. Like all New Year's beverages, it poured an effervescent light straw color with a rapidly-dissipating head. The nose was a wonderful combination of sweet grapes and honey with some subtle bready yeast notes.

Tasting the wine, I actually found it to be a bit sweet for a brut, though my wife disagreed (and she likes her wine quite dry) so maybe I'm just getting too used to dry wines. Regardless, it was a good, fruity sweet rather than a cheap, syrupy sweet. It's hard for me to pick out the specific sweet flavors (white grape juice would seem a bit redundant) but I would say there's some honey and cotton candy in the profile. As you swallow, the acidity keeps the sweetness from being cloying, along with a dryness of grape skins and apple peel. The finish is just dry enough to leave you coming back for another sip without becoming mouth-puckering.

Overall, a great wine to start off the New Year. I seriously wonder if this sparkling wine would be substantially more expensive if it were produced in the Champagne region of France. Either way, a great wine at a great price. On the patented Chibebräu Wine scale (skip it, only if it's on sale, or buy it again), this one is definitely a buy it again. Happy New Year!