Tire Pé? It’s me, Margaret.

Barrault “Château Tire Pé” 2010 Bordeaux “DieM” (Bordeaux) – Mostly merlot, with the cabernets each playing a 10% role. As many wine folk long lost in geekery tend to do, I spend a lot of time in stores spinning bottles to find the importer strip for stylistic clues to wines I don’t know. Pre-culling, so to speak. So I was surprised when, having noted the identity of a well-known natural-focused importer, I re-spun the bottle to find that I was holding a Bordeaux. You don’t see that combination every day.

Anyway, the wine. Yes, it’s Bordeaux. There’s classicism (tobacco-tinged fruit, fuzzy/leathery-textured tannin, a hint of graphite, dark fruit that’s more skin than juice), for sure, though its of the type more typically expressed – at least in theory – by the lower end of the spectrum rather than the showy classed growths, the sort of wine that purchasers of generic Bordeaux all over France think they’re drinking with their daily meal. But aren’t, because those wines aren’t this good. While it’s not organoleptically flexible enough to be a constant companion at the global American table, perhaps, with the right food I could very happily own and then consume a lot of this wine. In fact, I think I will. (3/12)


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