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.