Yesterday was bitter cold, and the wind seemed to blow right thru you.  We headed back to Chateauneuf du Pape and again barrel tasted a wine we thought was very nice and got some more advice from Jean at one of the Caves.  This took all morning, and we then needed to break for lunch.  Ahh, the French.  You have to stop for lunch because the entire rest of the country stops, and even if you wanted to do something you couldn't because everything except the restaurants are closed.

After lunch we visited three wineries and tasted in total almost twenty wines today.  We selected three in addition to the two from yesterday to blind taste again with dinner.  We asked our host Sean, to mix the order and serve the wines one at a time with dinner while we all made copius notes.  Five wines had made the final cut and now we had to decide if any had a "WOW" factor.  The dinner was beef cheeks (a speciality of Laurainne) and they were fantastic and a perfect match for the wines. 

The first wine was a classic Chateauneuf du Pape with nice spice, and black fruit but didn't linger on the pallet and was not a "WOW".  The second and third were interesting but I was still not wowed.  The fourth - the winner -however did the trick.  The wine was both big and elegant with deep black fruit and spice that finised with tea leaves and beautiful complexity.  It is a true "WOW."  The fifth wine was dense and rough and may be great in a couple of years but is not good for us now.

To our surprise the winner was a wine from our first day in Gigondas.  You may not know Gigondas now but there are some terrific wines from there, and if this wine makes our final cut you will get to taste a classic.  The wine is Cuvée Morgan from Domaine de la Tourade a very small producer owned by a lovely husband and wife team who were delightful when we spent an hour tasting their wines.

We are going to retaste this against the others we find the rest of the week and see if it makes the final cut.  Today we are off to Cahors to begin our venture into Southwestern France, ending in Bordeaux.  I'll keep you posted.

Santé
Bob