Rosemount Estate and Montpellier
February 25, 2006 – 11:38 pmLast night, Ariele and I had a few people over for dinner, and over the course of the evening, Roger, Mike, Kristin, and I ended up splitting two bottles of wine that I really enjoyed.
I suppose I should admit up front that I am by no means a wine connoisseur. I pretty much have restricted myself to bottles of wines that cost less than $10, with a few notable exceptions. The two bottles that we had last night were the 2004 Rosemount Estate Cabernet Merlot blend and the 2001 Montpellier Syrah. Ariele bought the Rosemount at Trader Joe’s for $3.95, and Roger brought the Syrah over with him.
I can easily say the Rosemount is the best sub-$4 bottle of wine I’ve had. From what I had read about the wine at Trader Joe’s, Rosemount was looking to clear their inventory as a result of a change in recipe or some such thing. As a result, Trader Joe’s “negotiated” an arrangement with them and had plenty of the various Rosemount wines for $3.95 per bottle. I enjoyed the Cabernet Merlot blend so much that Ariele and I went back to Trader Joe’s today and bought two more bottles of it, one bottle of their Shiraz Cabernet blend, and one bottle of their Grenache Shiraz blend.
The Montpellier was the better of the two bottles we had last night, though. Roger said he got it on recommendation from a wine store that’s near the beer store he goes to for brewing supplies. I think it’s fair to say Roger definitely didn’t get burned with that recommendation. An interesting bit of trivia? Syrah and shiraz are the same grape. Why do I think that’s interesting? Because I don’t know jack about wine, so almost any fact related to wine seems like interesting trivia to me.
What would life be without the $4 bottle of wine?