Issue XIX: Montebuena Rioja Edition

Montebuena Rioja [Tempranillo] 

One of the things I like about the Utah wine stores, especially the one that’s my usual haunt, is that they are really passionate about the product line. It’s not simply an afterthought, grudgingly built and stocked, but rather conducting classes and doing a great job with product placement to highlight some lesser known but high value wines, usually near the checkout. That was where I discovered this one.

The HSC is built around value and finding something like this for under $10 definitely had my attention, particularly since the first quite a few bottles turned out so very good. What we had was a light and lively gem, delivering up that lovely berry taste that Tempranillo is so very good at, while having a nice edge to it, so as to keep the fruit from being too overwhelming. It was right on the border of needing more maturation time, but was eminently drinkable, for the most part.

However, when you’re playing in the under $10 area, you tend to be gambling a bit more than some of the higher priced entries and along down the line, some streakiness came in. It’s kind of like “when he was good, he was very good”, but here, it’s more like “when he was bad, he was notably less good, but not quite bad outright.” In a few of these, the borderline elements, such as the astringency, become assertive enough to make me wonder if it needs more maturation and doesn’t ever seem to quite smooth out all the way, even after more than an hour of air time. Fortunately, those bottles are not especially common, but it does bear noting.

For quite a while, this was a Standard, but for that classification, the HSC demands that the wines be able to be counted on time after time and bottle after bottle. When it becomes less of a sure thing and more of a gamble, which is reasonable when it’s on SPA and under $10, then it can only be a SPA-Only wine.

Issue XVIII: Meiomi Pinot Noir Edition

 Belle Glos Meiomi Pinot Noir

Last installment I mentioned an article from various Salt Lake chefs asking for their choice for best wine under $20. One of those names was the title of the last edition, the wonderful Atrea Old Soul red. This is the second and like the Atrea, pushes right up against our ceiling, again pretending that sales tax doesn’t exist.

What Atrea did for me with regards to blends, Meiomi did for me with Pinots. I’d had plenty of those in the past, however, whoever was choosing them tended towards the sour and didn’t necessarily allow them any breathing time before consuming. In a word, I can best describe this experience as: ACK! It led to some degree of confusion when seeing the movie “Sideways,” not related to the actual movie and writing, which have their own bailiwick, but also to why they would choose that particular grape to highlight. After experiencing Meiomi, my eyes were opened and my head cleared to what this grape could do and what this wine could be.

Frankly, this is by far my favorite Pinot Noir and in the area of one of my favorite wines in general. When people ask about what I think is the overall best wines of the list, this is one of them that I always mention, even though the name seems to be sometimes a bit of a mouthful for some of the people asking. I don’t often say this about wines, but the one adjective I would use to describe this is delicious. It is a very smooth, medium-bodied wine, with a bit of latent sweetness to it, but it still has enough of a tannin kick to lend a bit of astringency to it, though that dissipates and silks out a bit with enough air time. It is for this reason that I usually give it around 15 – 20 minutes of air time before getting to it, so the first round will have a bit of punch to it and the second will be a lot rounder and mellowed.

As with the Atrea, a bottle of this is pushing right against that $20 ceiling. I have never seen this particular brand or any of the variations, including this, on SPA, ever, which precludes it from SPA Only. With that kind of price point, it also makes it difficult to tag as a Standard, so by process of elimination, this comes in as a Mixed, though also like the Atrea, I still like to get this in the mix every so often.