Famille Laurent Saint Pourcain

Grapes:  50% Gamay, 50% Pinot Noir

Vintage: 2007

Background:  This is something pretty unusual.  A Pinot Noir, Gamay blend from central France.  This comes from near the very head waters of the Loire.  Saint Pourcain was just recently awarded AOC status, mostly based on the strength of this producer. 

Aroma:  This wine combines the characteristics of the two grapes perfectly.  The aroma has the perfumed aromatics of Pinot Noir interwoven with an earthy quality that seems like cigar box to me.  It's a bit woodsy and has some ripe black cherry about it.  It's a beautifully intriguing aroma.

Pallet:  The wine is smooth and has all the racy beguiling velvet texture of a good Pinot Noir, but with a bit more fruit from the Gamay which gives the wine a follow through; a fuller mid-pallet that lives up to what the aroma promised.  It's very smooth and polished.  There are some tannins, but you don't notice them at all, or miss them.  The lovely texture, racy acidity, and vivid aroma of singed wood define this wine and keep me coming back to it.

This is another of my new French wines imported by Maximilien Selections that I am just floored by the complexity and honestly un-apologetic Frenchness of.