A Little French experience

A friend of mine recently invited me to a French wine tasting. Finding French wines complicated, and being in a part of the world that doesn't always represent French wines very well and are usually on the pricey side, I welcomed the invitation with open arms.

Starting with a whites, the Chateaux Lamoth de Haut from Bordeau was a fun little wine. We followed this one with two Chardonnays from Burgundy, both browned bagged. In doing this, we got to not only not discuss the wine in depth without having the knowledge of the cost of the wine, but got our minds going on how a producer could affect a wine even if in the same region. There was a Bourgogne and  a Pouilly Fuisse, same grapes, but one had a more pronounced vanilla oak flavor and the other although lighter, had more of an acidic freshness to it.

The reds were what interested me! Starting with a Beaujolais, a wine that I learnt celebrates the harvest and can also determine the price of the future crop, was a very light red and had a light smell of purple. The challenge of the two others which were blind, was to try to uncover which one was a Gamay or a Pinot Noir. One was light, dry and had no sense of its ability to age. The second, a bold, darker hue and slightly heavier red, had to sense that it could hold age as well as complexe notes. My first extinct was to say the the light was the Gamay, since Beaujolais usually dont't  age well, but the interesting thing was the nose of the lightest and the heaviest was very similar. As well as the purple hue that surrounded the glass on a slight angle. And after discussing, it was unveiled that the light and the heavy was one in the same.

And that's why I love wine so much, one grape from the same region made in a different manner can taste and react so differently but at the base of the wine, their soul is the same.