There must be countless good stories that start 'on our way to Dive' and this one does too (and doesn't start with our turning up to Dive drunk, like this one does the time we visited Laurent Lebled). It was on our way to the Dive that we stopped at Les Becs à Vin in Orléans around 8 and drank a bottle of Deboutbertin. I remember the time because I remember thinking 'How civilised' to manage to drive to France and be round abouts were you need to be round abouts drinking time, and I remember the wine because it needed time to open and we still needed time to drive so we corked it and took it with us and it rolled around under our feet in the car all week. So we did what any civilised person would do in as civilised a country as France and took it with us when we stopped back at Les Becs à Vin for lunch 5 days later and asked if we could finish it where we started it.
The guy at the bar said sure, if I can try it too and it had opened and it was delicious and this after a week of wine. It was a Pineau d'Aunis called L'Aunis Étoilé so when I saw the Grolleau this summer I thought it a good way to go.
Grolleau isn't accepted by the AOC as a red wine but who cares about a AOC recognition on a Sunday morning when your mamma's cooking blueberry pancakes in her robe and you wake to the smell of them brown-sticking to the pan and scoot your ass downstairs 'cus you like the the doughy ones that come out first? Or not literally but that's what this wine tastes like.
Tasting notes:
Looks like Welch's Concord grape jam. Smells like Cassis syrup on warm blueberry pancakes with a dollop of vanilla cream. Flavours on the palate echo the nose, starting as poppy blueberry juice with a fermenting fruit fizziness (no actual fizz but the feeling of fizz, or is it fuzz?) to open to supple meaty blueberry leather that I also find in Georgian red wines. Clean, very mineral (schist), smooth medium body.
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'Baliverne' 2015
Deboutbertin
Grolleau Noir
Faye d'Anjou, Loire
