Les Welcome
Whether by intent or tragic mis-typing, you’ve landed on the home of Les Garagistes winery collective. If you’re new to our dark cabal, a rich and heady stew of bad French grammar and subterranean winemaking awaits. But where to start? Here are a few suggestions:
- First, you might take a quick stroll through last year’s vintage escapades, accumulated over the two critical months of September 2009 and October 2009 (remember that the posts are presented with the earliest at the bottom of the page).
- Then, who are these Garagistes and where do they get off? And didn’t I hear they were dead?
- We sully the fine pages of Fine Cooking Magazine
- Winehenge: the movie. If that’s not enough to get you to click…
- A French oak barrel primer
- Red, Rex Sox (Yankees fans, be forewarned)
- Plastic capsules and why we switched to paper
- Lastly, mourn with the Moody Blues as they appear to lament the end of a Les Garagistes harvest.
Thanks much for stopping by. We’ve got fruit lined up for 2010 — with new varietals ensuring we’ll be making even more up as we go along — so another exciting vintage is just ahead. Hope you can join us for it, and let us know what you think of what we’ve cobbled together.
2006 Peugeot sighting
Last night — purely in the interest of science, you understand — Garagiste Mike opened a bottle of the 2006 Peugeot we bottled back in April. While it’s had two months to get its sea legs, it should have been far from ready for active duty; the 05, for example, took about a year after bottling to finally skate about the deck.
The 2006 seems generally on the same trajectory, but we were both surprised at how far it’s come along. After a half hour to catch its breath in a decanter, the Peug tasted rich and full, with great depth of fruit, hint of chocolate, and a generous, luxurious feel in the mouth. And the fragrance: holy olfactory! A backdraft of pure, ripe fruit that’s totally disarming.
It was still on the hard side, though — more laser-cut steel than sanded wood — and by the time we got to the finish, it was already a few miles into Mexico and out of our jurisdiction. While there’s no guarantee it will slip back into the country some day, I think all that flavor and fragrance suggest there’s a good chance it’ll do just that.
Any one else tried it since bottling?
1 comment1 Comment so far
I opened one of these in early December (2008) and found it to have matured a good deal since June. I like it – it’s not quite ready for prime time but it has structure, backbone and I might even say elegance. The finish is a bit fruity – takes you back to what you taste off the press. I sent a bottle to all the relatives and told them to drink or hold.