2 Birds, 1 Stone

OTBN and a new grape!  I participated in the Twitter Taste Live hosted by Wilson Daniels for Open That Bottle Night.  I’m going to give each of the 4 wines we tasted its own post as I think they were all excellent values and deserve some attention.  The second wine up for the evening turned out to be a completely new grape for us.  Yay, #83 on our Century Club application!  Made from the Aligote grape, we tasted the 2006 Pierre Morey Bourgogne Aligote as the second wine.  It had a real cork closure, clocked in at 12.5% alcohol by volume, and retails for around $14.  I paid something less than that from Bin Ends Wine as I purchased it in a tasting pack for the TTL.

Being as how I’ve never had an Aligote, I had no idea what to expect from this wine, and I had a lot of trouble moving quickly through this wine in the TTL format.  I wanted to linger so I could figure out the mystery.  Instead, I came back to the wine after the TTL ended and spent a good hour with it.  On the nose I found white pepper, overripe pear, minerals, spice, pineapple, and the scent that I couldn’t place…which I finally decided smelled of hard cider.  In the mouth I got flavors of lemon pith, citrus, stones, spice, some restrained pear, maybe kiwi, a metallic taste, sort of like tin can, and then finally, I placed the familiar flavor of hard cider.

This wine really grew on me as I kept tasting it.  I wasn’t sure what to think at first, but I’d definitely give the Aligote grape another go or two.  By the end of the evening, I really liked it and was sad to see the bottle empty.