2008 Rocca Bello Negroamaro - reviewed by Kerri

The facts:
2008 Rocca Bello Negroamaro
Region: Puglia, Italy
Variety: Negroamaro

We picked this up one day at a local liquor store because we’ve had negroamaros a few times before and Jonathan has liked them. That, and we were looking for a slightly less expensive wine to review. (I’m not sure how we routinely choose bottles that are around $13.99, but that seems to be our resting point these days.)




My take:

It smells dark red and young (i.e., I could smell the alcohol), but I guess you’d expect that since this is a 2008. I’d say it’s medium to full bodied and complex enough for the price point. (It’s not a $30 wine in an $11 bottle. Nor is it a $7 wine in an $11 bottle. It seems right on the money for $11, maybe a tad more complex than you’d expect at that price.)

When just sipping...
Most of the flavor is up front, comes across as dark purple, the middle seemed a bit weak for me, the finish is longer than I expected at the price point, and it’s on the dry side.

Pulling some air over it is when the wine really expresses itself. The flavors are more balanced through the beginning and middle. It tastes dark red to purple up front and then the taste buds perk up a bit in the middle, where you get more of the complexity, and the finish is even longer with a bit of spiciness to it.

I wish I could write sonnets about it, but it’s just not doing it for me tonight for some reason. It makes me want to have some cheese. Perhaps as a sipping wine, I find it a bit too big? Not mellow enough? Not sure. I suspect it would age well and if I weren’t full from Thanksgiving leftovers, I would definitely be tempted to break out some manchego and give it another try.

Okay, so let 5 minutes pass and pick this up again. As soon as I wrote that perhaps food would add to my enjoyment of the wine, I felt guilty for not giving it that chance. So, I broke out some cheese.

I do enjoy the wine more with the cheese. As I said, I think it’s just a tad too big for my tastes to be a sipping wine. In the interest of full disclosure..., the wine bottle itself says it’s “perfect with red meats, pizza and all Mediterranean spiced dishes.”

Price point:

It was $10.99 in DC.

2008 Rocca Bella Negroamaro

A darkly enticing aroma. I wrote that just as a note to myself just by way of a note to begin the writing process. I was going to embellish it some and string it into a long metaphor, involving candle lit swanky bars with muted electronic down-tempo playing, with fez wearing fashionistas smoking clove cigarettes, but that seemed a bit much, so we will just have to settle for using it as the wine blog equivalent of “it was a dark and stormy night”.

So my love of the Negroamaro started at Proof on either our second or third visit there. They had one by the glass and I was absolutely smitten by it. This leads me to the greatest and worst thing about Proof. Their wine list is constantly changing, and its not uncommon to have a different line up on two visits in the same month. Alas the next time we went, literally three weeks later, my new love was gone a dim memory in the backlighting of their glass bar.

Unfortunately, as it is not a particularly common grape, the odds of running into one are somewhat akin to a chance encounter with either the Loch Ness monster or an Australian wine worth drinking. If you see one on a menu, I highly recommend stopping what ever you are doing and ordering a glass, a bottle, or better yet a nebakanezer immediately.

So, I started with the aroma, and I think I will pick back up there. As mentioned it has a somewhat dark aroma, with an air of cherry and earthiness to it. Much like tawny port, this would be a wine that I am content to swirl in a glass and living in the luxuriousness that is the nose of this divine beverage.

The color would be a deep dark rich red, and with less than half a glass in me, I feel compelled to go to the garage, get a ladder, climb up to the roof and proclaim my love for this wine loudly for all to hear. Alas, drinking and ladders don’t go together, nor would my neighbors take kindly to a crazy man shouting about wine from the top of his house. That being said, you could probably label me as a fan.

Opened up, and in the glass this wine becomes increasingly expressive. Starting with what would be best described as the most fleeting of gently sour notes, giving way to an enveloping array of subtle, yet strong flavors. I would speak of them individually, but to do so would less their entirety. Suffice to say cherries are involved in a way that legitimizes that much maligned fruit (I should note, I don’t think cherries are actually much maligned, it just sounded good, and I don’t tend to like them.) and the finish is a long drawn out affair that serves to slow down consumption and to draw out the enjoyment of this wine.

I’m not sure what the availability is like in general, but we picked this one up at our corner liquor store (one that isn’t known for its wine selection) and I know I will be heading back up their to take their remaining stock.

2006 Chateau Lamothe de Haux

The facts:

2006 Chateau Lamothe de Haux
Region: Premieres Cotes de Bordeaux, France
Variety: 60% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Cabernet Franc


(Disclosure: I cheated and did not take a photograph of our wine bottle; I grabbed this image from the internet. Rest assured that the bottle we have is 2006, not 2005.)

My take:

I was excited to try this wine – I love a good Bordeaux blend and the color was beautiful – a nice red-brown. The nose was light, which seemed perfect to go with pork tenderloin. That’s as far as my optimistic notes are going to go.

I think I finally had what I would consider a full-bodied wine. This wine feels quite thick and viscous in the mouth. I personally didn’t care for the texture. The taste is very light up front, a bit more brown in the middle, and you get some complexity in the finish, if you pull a good amount of air over the wine. However, if you’re just sipping this wine, it’s completely nondescript. It’s very short, with little complexity or flavor. After the first glass and making some notes about it, I found myself completely uninterested in drinking more.

Don't get me wrong..., I didn’t dislike the wine, but I didn’t like it all that much either. I will say, drinking it with dinner did lengthen the wine somewhat, but I still found it thin in flavor (not texture). Luckily, dinner did not disappoint. For any food network aficionados, I made Paula Dean's apple stuffed pork tenderloin. Now that I can recommend. It was easy and delicious!

Price point:
Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps the Chateau Lamothe de Haux Blanc is better and/or more well-known than the Rouge. We got the red through our wine club and an internet search reveals lots of places selling the white, but I couldn’t find the red.

2006 Chateau Lamothe de Haux Bordeaux Rouge

So sometimes, a wine needs to open up a bit before you truly can enjoy it. You know that kind of wine? This one isn’t it. Now, that’s not to say that a little air, a little warmth, a little time hasn’t effected it, they did, and unfortunately it made it suck a bit more than it did when I tried at a 55 degrees.

So I am going to do two reviews. It’s like a twofer for you my beloved readers.

Review 1. Wine straight out of the wine fridge and a mellow 55 degrees (Yes I am aware that’s too cold, but the thermostat on the fridge doesn’t work, and they are expensive, so unless you are going to send me a big fat check for a new one, that’s the temperature this wine is getting reviewed at).

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It was like a non-wine really, a grape colored slightly alcoholic starter wine for those who are afraid of flavor. Hardly any nose to speak of, with a watery semi-grape smell. The color was decent, on the red side of thing (as opposed to the purple). I think the tap water I was drinking actually had more flavor then it did.

Review 2. 35-40 minutes later after dinner.

It was like things went from bad to worse, excepting, of course, that it wasn’t really bad before hand, just kind of “meh”. So, I guess that’s from meh to bad then, or is that from meh to worse? Details.... Once opened up it moved from no nose, to a decided aroma of wet leaves. Not wet leaves in that “gee isn’t fall great” kind of way, but more like in that “what’s that smell” kind of way. The flavor went from “upfront, short and unremarkable” to a slow lingering tannic assault that besmirches the good name of all of the wines that have gone before it.

Fine…..maybe that last sentence was pure literary hyperbole so that I can flex my previously declared universal poetic license, but suffice to say the wine just isn’t really that good. In fact, if you ever decide to try this wine, maybe have a shot of tequila or three first, I suspect it will heighten the enjoyment immensely.