It's a Gigondas!

By Rob Bralow

Remember that photo I showed you last week about the good packaging that came from Cotes-du-Rhone? It doesn't matter, I am going to show it to you again anyway.


Isn't that lovely? Simple and elegant. It actually inspired me to do a similar wrap on all of my bottle gifts that I gave for the holidays in artfully taped paper. Mine looked nothing like the photo above, I actually have no artistic talent, only taste (good or bad, it's still taste!).

I was very pleased to find that one of those bottles was the 2005 Pierre Amadieu Gigondas Romane Machotte . That's a lot of names for one wine, but what you need to really know is that the wine is from Gigondas, made by Pierre Amadieu. Got it?

Gigondas is a Southern AOC in the Rhone Valley in France. This AOC produces only red wines, with very little Rose as well. This particular wine is made from Grenache and Syrah and I could drink it all day.

The nose had a nice perfume with a mix of figs and dried cherries. In my mouth the wine was rich and vibrant, pushing red cherry, fig and some pepper through a steady structure and ending with a little anise. Really yummy, I would pick one up pronto. For $25, I think this is properly valued.

Nice Package

By Rob Bralow

In November I wrote about how The Whole Package is Important, and I thought I would follow that up with some really great packages to show you how its done.

And you thought I was going to take you to see some other packages didn't you... sometimes knowing my mother is reading this is just enough a deterrent. Sometimes...

But, back to some spiffy packaging. Some are simple like this one from the people running the program for Cotes-du-Rhones:


You have probably seen their ads in the major wine trade publications, the ones comparing a fabulous meal with a pizza or a hamburger (which I might add is definitely one of the important food groups). The message is that wines from Cotes-du-Rhone are for every occasion. I think Fred Fanzia might have that market covered, but I think wine all the time is not a bad thing.

Then I received this from Grand Marnier:


Their new marketing campaign is La Vie Grand Marnier, very red and flashy and all about women. Seriously, if they were thinking of targeting men in this ad campaign they missed, but I think that all of the Chic clothing hits women in the jealous spot. I think. Honestly, I'm a man and know so little about these things that one would have to sit down and explain it to me very slowly... They did go to the trouble of creating a video, although I find it a little strange that there is no website attached to the campaign and no mention of it on the Grand Marnier homepage. And the contest that is on the homepage has expired...

And then there was Tempra Tantrum





I felt like someone had decided what the flashiest almost clashing colors on the color wheel were and threw them at this box. This is marketing at its finest. Fredric Koeppel at Bigger Than Your Head also received this gawdy package and had some great commentary. For me, a person who thinks about marketing and public relations for clients, I think this is beautiful. I mean, it has all of the information that an uninformed, novice in the wine world could possibly want to know about the wines in the box. And it even comes with Toñito, not the Spanish football player but instead a somewhat bullhorn shaped webcam. I won't talk about the wines (that's tomorrow's post), but I will say that from a marketing perspective this is a nice package.

Quick Taste: Maison Bouachon

A while ago (and I mean forEVER ago) I received a ton of wines from Robert Skalli, the best of which were the Maison Bouachon line. I almost wish the PR people that sent me the wines were a little more pushy about getting a response from me. I know, tough line to walk so I don't blame them too much. I blame myself.

From the Maison Bouachon I tasted their Chateauneuf-du-Pape "La Tiare de Pape" 2006 and Cotes-du-Rhones "Les Rabassieres" 2006. I found the Chateauneuf to be ripe with cherry, vanilla, and sweet milk chocolate. In my mouth I had a smooth blueberry, black pepper, and ripe cherry taste with some soft tannins. Pretty good wine.

The Cotes-du-Rhones had spicebox, cinnamon, and red cherry aromas and was a pleasant wine with some raspberry, but it really dropped off at the end.