Four French wines you can afford

The biggest problem with Friday night's Planet Bordeaux Twitter tasting was that the Wine Curmudgeon couldn't drink the four wines over four nights, one night at a time. It was a shame to have to do them all at the same time.

Planet Bordeaux is a marketing effort to give well-made and well-priced wine from the less famous parts of the French region of Bordeaux exposure they don't normally get. The Twitter tasting was part of that effort; you can follow the tweets here. The tweeters, wine writers and bloggers, seemed impressed with the wines.

Here are my notes on the four wines, which kicks off rose week. The blog will feature the dry pink wine that too many of us don't appreciate, including a rose wine of the week on Wednesday and my annual rose preview on Thursday.

• Dourthe Grand Cuvee 2010 ($12, sample): This white is very New World in style, with grapefruit and pineapple in the middle. Well done; just not especially French.

• Chateau La Freynelle Blanc 2010 ($13, sample): This is an old friend, and I wasn't disappointed. It's more French-tasting than the Dourthe, though still a fair amount of citrus.

• Chateau Ballan Larquette Rose 2010 ($16, sample): An interesting wine that divided the tweeters and is difficult to describe. Some said it smelled like tomatoes; others said red fruit. I liked it, but $16 is a problem.

• Chateau Fontenille 2010 ($14, sample): My favorite of the tasting -- clean with deep red fruit and almost more red wine than rose. It's available in some markets for $10 a bottle, which makes it highly recommended.

Comments

[Mwangbickler]

Hey Jeff,

Glad you could join us on Friday. I'm also glad that, as a group, the wines showed very well. Thanks for participating.

Mike

[John Cesano]

"Some said it smelled like tomatoes; others said red fruit."

Allowing that tomatoes are a red fruit, maybe everyone agreed. On whether they liked it, we'', that was more divisive. I did not love it, having tasted two pink wines in the previous 24 hours that I loved much more.

The other three wines tasted were all winners, and a .750 batting average is beyond major league solid.

John