What’s in Wine Girl’s Glass?

This wine is the perfect pairing for a pulled pork sandwich. For a wine of its kind, it’s unusually dark in the glass — probably due to its hailing from an extra good, warm vintage in its somewhat northerly locale. Blue-black-red color, with aromas of sour cherry suckers, strawberry compote, and tell-tale green pepper. This is not a sipping wine. It is a food wine. Here, as in all great pairings, the food and the wine tease out hidden characteristics in each other and make them sing. First, the wine’s knife-like acidity cuts right through the sweetness of the barbeque sauce. Then, red and black stone fruit come through, with spice, roasted red pepper, and a certain appealing meatiness. Tight as a drum, but with a certain heft once it gets to wash down a bite of sandwich. Best of all, only $7 by the glass.

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We can venture right away that this is a European wine, since I made such a bid deal out of its being a food wine from an “extra good, warm vintage.” (In California and most other New World climes, most vintages are extra good and warm.) France? Germany? Both had superb vintages in 2005, and wines from those years are on the market now … We can also surmise that this wine is a red wine, that it’s characteristically tightly-structured, and has a “tell-tale” aroma of green pepper. Let’s rule out Germany then, which is known more for its whites, and think northern France: Alsace? Loire? Ah-hah: the pepper notes in this wine should make us think of the wonderful red wines of the Loire river valley, which are made from cabernet franc, a grape that likes to show off peppery and veggie notes when vinified. The two key reds from the Loire are Chinon and Bourgueil — let’s choose Bourgueil since it’s the lesser-known of the two and more likely to be sold at this appealing price point.

And we’d be right. It’s a lovely Bourgueil “Les Vingt Lieux Dits” from Domaine du Bel Air, vintage 2005.