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Advent Wine Challenge Day 15: Barbare Premiere Mourvedre

 

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This particular wine is another review long in coming. I opened it last winter for Open That Bottle night. I bought this when I visited Barbare to interview the owner for my book. That must have been six years ago now? Barbare wines are generally fairly easy to access, but these premiere varietal wines less so which is why I’d been holding onto it. 

Worth. The. Wait!

Advent day 15

Barbare Premiere Mourvedre, 2012

This 100% Mourvedre aged for 36 months in French oak. Knowing that it would be tight out of the bottle, I opened it, decanted it, then went to Saturday evening Mass before coming home to make dinner and drink it! 

Deeply colored and darkly aromaed. Dried, crushed herbs and flowers, lavender, and black pepper over bramble fruit, potting soil, and tobacco with a dusting of biter cocoa powder. Silk and structure on the palate with mouthwatering acidity. You’d never know this was 15% alcohol. Plum jam and acai berry flavors struck the palate first followed by lavender, dried herbs, and cocoa powder. Just gorgeous. 

I made an herbs de Provence crusted steak and crispy roasted potatoes to go with the wine. Beautiful beautiful. 

On a super depressing note, the current regime is once again proposing a measure that will further suppress, if not this time outright kill the wine industry. Thank you to one of my lovely readers who alerted me to this! In brief, from this article by Mehmet Yalçın:

According to the draft of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, after the New Year, wine and beer producers will be asked for a large letter of guarantee “to guarantee their payment of future taxes.” This figure will be 5 million lira for beer and wine up to a capacity of 20 thousand liters, 10 million lira for a capacity of up to 300 thousand liters, and 30 million lira for a capacity of over 300 thousand liters. A letter of guarantee of 50 million lira will be received from those who produce or import high alcoholic beverages, regardless of capacity. 

Assuming some of our smaller wineries manage to come up with the guarantee, it will have a massive effect on the already high price of wine in Turkey as further explained by Gurme Ajanda.

So, you know aside from world peace, if you pray or make Christmas or New Year wishes…send this up to the Big Guy.