Weekly Wine Tastings July 11-12, 2008

Bastille Day Celebration Wine Tasting

Featuring the Wines of Kermit Lynch and Robert “Bobby” Kacher

Please join us at the i.m.Wine tasting bar every Friday and Saturday from 1-7pm; this week we are tasting:

The Wines of Robert Kacher (Friday July 11, 2008)
Robert “Bobby” Kacher was born and raised in Florida, and attended the University of Maryland.  Bobby came to his love of wine while backpacking through France his sophomore year of college.  Impatient to pursue his newfound passion, Bobby returned to the States, settled in Washington, DC and got started working in a retail wine store where he learned that the personal interaction of connecting directly to the wine drinking consumer was what really excited him most about the wine business.  Then, after working as a consultant and later becoming a top executive at World Shippers and Importers, Bobby founded Robert Kacher Selections, and as the saying goes “The rest is history”.   After working as a consultant and later becoming a top executive at World Shippers and Importers. Today Bobby spends 6 to 8 months in France working side by side with the growers to develop the final wines he will import.   This dedication and passion for the wine business has resulted in numerous awards and accolades: Recently Robert Parker named him “one of the 20 most influential wine personalities of the past 20 years” and declared that “seeing Bobby’s name on a bottle is as close as you can get to a seal of quality”.  In 2004 Bobby became Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite Agricole, one of only a handful of U.S. importers to ever receive the prestigious honor. 

2006 Domaine du Tariquet Ugni Blanc
Retail Price: $9.99   Bastille Day Price: $7.99
From the Cotes de Gascogne region of southwest France. This wonderfully exuberant, flavorful, dry, light-bodied wine is brimming with fresh, crisp fruit. Although it is not complex, it will offer pure, zesty freshness and delicious drinking. 

2007 Domaine des Corbillieres Sauvignon Blanc Touraine
Retail Price: $12.99 Bastille Day Price: $10.39
Smells intensely and mouth-wateringly of fresh lime, honeydew melon, cress, passion fruit, pennyroyal and toasted nuts. Pure and bursting with ripe fruit on the palate, it balances juicy refreshment with a glossy texture and for Sauvignon, a surprising sense of fullness. Effusive and utterly satisfying, this wine finishes lusciously Margarita-like with lime, orange zest, salt and chalk. 

2007 Chateau Grande Cassagne Costieres de Nimes Rose
Retail Price: $10.99 Bastille Day Price: $8.79
One of the best roses I have tasted this spring includes 25% Mourvedre in the blend (the remainder is Grenache and Syrah). Its delicate, light ruby/salmon color is followed by gorgeous aromas of candied strawberries intermixed with raspberries and cherries. This light to medium-bodied, dry rose possesses admirable weight as well as structure.

2006 Domaine des Corbillieres Touraine Cabernet Franc
Retail Price: $12.99 Bastille Day Price: $10.39
Offers an exceptional introduction to the wiles of that grape as well as a tribute to the potential of the Touraine. Aromas of toasted praline, lightly-cooked blackberries, machine oil, and licorice lead to a palate at once creamy and invigoratingly juicy, with cherry pit, blackberry, and toasty nut oil flavors carrying into a polished, satisfying finish.

2007 Mas des Bressades Syrah / Grenache
Retail Price: $12.99 Bastille Day Price: $10.39
A blend of 55% Grenache and 45% Syrah, the 2007 Syrah/Grenache is aged only in tank, and is all the better for it. A dark ruby hue is accompanied by crunchy, fresh, lively, cherry and currant fruit, excellent purity, zesty acidity, and a long, heady finish. 

2005 Cotes du Rhone VV, Domaine Santa Duc
Retail Price: $15.99 Bastille Day Price: $12.79
One of the super-stars of Gigondas, Santa Duc has turned out a sumptuous, rich, spicy, medium to full-bodied Cotes du Rhone that is available for a song.  Their 2005 Cotes du Rhone boasts a dark ruby/purple color, as well as a knock-out nose of black pepper, kirsch, roasted peanuts, and chocolate. Dense and medium to full-bodied, with no hard edges, this is a supple-textured, delicious, mouthfilling Cotes du Rhone. 

The Wines of Kermit Lynch (Saturday July 12, 2008)
Kermit Lynch was born and raised in California. From his youth he remembers that his father and uncle worked for a winery, but he has no memory of anyone in his family drinking wine. In 1972 he opened a retail wine shop and later began importing and distributing nationally. In 2000 he was named Wine Professional of the Year by the James Beard Foundation, in 1998 the French government presented him a medal and named him Chevalier de l'Ordre de Mérite Agricole, and in 2005 he received the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. His book Adventures on the Wine Route, won the Veuve Clicquot Wine Book of the Year award.  In 1998 he purchased the historic Domaine Les Pallières in Gigondas in partnership with his friends the Bruniers of Vieux Télégraphe.  With his wife, photographer Gail Skoff, and their two children, he lives part of the year in Berkeley, and part in Provence, "near enough to Domaine Tempier that I can fill up the trunk of my car whenever I need to." 

2007 Ch Granville Lacoste Grave Blanc
Retail Price: $20.99 Bastille Day Price: $16.79
A rich, white Bordeaux from the Graves area of Bordeaux. The typical blend is 80% Semillon, 15% Sauvignon Blanc, and 5% Muscadelle from old vines. Fresh citrus and melon with wonderful complexity from a great vintage. 

2006 Vouvray, Champalou
Retail Price: $19.99 Bastille Day Price: $15.99
The 2006 Vouvray is what locals call sec tendre, i.e. with discrete sweetness, and the resulting wine is versatile and user-friendly. With lovely aromas of pear, quince, anise, and brown spices this comes to the palate polished and creamy in texture, and with ethereal delicacy. It lays down subtly chalky, salty mineral traces while continuing to pour on generous fruit.   90pts Wine Advocate 

2007 Bandol Rose, Tempier
Retail Price: $39.99 Bastille Day Price: $31.99
Domaine Tempier's Bandol Rose remains one of the world's reference points for how much flavor and character can be built into a rose wine. The wine possesses a medium salmon color, a super nose of red fruits, kirsch, strawberries, and spice, tremendous fruit, surprising body and richness, and a silky smooth texture. This delicious rose, which coats the palate with flavor, will drink well for 8-12 months, but who has that much discipline. 

2005 Cote de Brouilly, Thivin
Retail Price: $19.99 Bastille Day Price: $15.99
This medium to dark ruby/purple-colored wine has intense cherry syrup aromas. Medium-bodied and possessing tremendous density of fruit, it is rich, opulent, and chewy-textured. An extraordinary Cote de Brouilly, it contains massive quantities of cherries, raspberries, and candied strawberries

2005 Chinon les Petit Roches, Joguet
Retail Price: $22.99 Bastille Day Price: $18.39
Named for the chalk that underlies and periodically rises to the surface of this otherwise gravelly parcel, and accounts for its fresh-fruitedness and low pH. Smelling of fresh blackberry and mulberry, it offers a well-focused, finely-tannic, invigoratingly tart palate impression, lingering with simplicity but lip-smacking juiciness that belies its more than 14% alcohol. 

2005 Coteaux du Languedoc Rouge, Lascaux
Retail Price: $18.99 Bastille Day Price: $15.19
Displays aromas and flavors of cooked black raspberry, mint, thyme, bitter chocolate, and singed meats. Quite rich and dense on the palate with finely integrated tannins, it finishes with an impressively broad swath of flavor and promises several years of food-friendly enjoyment.

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