LCBO Sale Pick of the Week: April 2

Famille Perrin 2012 Côtes du Rhône Réserve (Rhône, France)

Sale $14.45, Regular $15.95
Discount (until April 26): $1.50
LCBO # 363457 | 750 mL bottle

Tastes like: Blueberry pie after you've smoked a nice cigar.
Pairs with: Venison, elk, partridge, and other things that eat blueberries.
Good for: A long meal in the country.
Alcohol: 13.5%
Drink: Now through 2018.

Why we’re drinking this
We’ve yet to taste a wine from the Perrin family that wasn’t worth drinking. This is the legendary wine family of the Southern Rhône region that, famously among wine geeks, teamed up with Brangelina to produce Miraval rosé, itself a very good wine from Provence. Perrin also makes the very popular cheap-and-cheerful La Vieille Ferme wines in the under-$15 category. You can pay close to $100 for their top range of collectible Châteauneuf-du-Pape… if you’re fancy. Or you can buy a case of this instead.

Tasting note
This wine has a rustic, gritty quality that we quite like. It’s generously fruity, with lots of black and red berries and some smoky tobacco. It’s not too hot, with only 13.5% alcohol—low by Southern Rhône standards. And we like that, as it makes the wine a little easier to appreciate, a bit more refreshing. Still, there’s that grittiness, a chewy quality and some really nice acidic tang. It’s a lively wine, packed with more flavour extract than many wines at this price point. There’s finesse in the winemaking. It’s a big wine with a gentle side. Drinking perfectly now, but worth dropping a couple of bottles into the cellar for future speculation.

Find it at your LCBO
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