3 September 2021
Blue Shell Sauvignon Blanc French Coastal Wine Pays d’Oc 2021
Oof. Well, the ball dropped Wednesday evening as I came home from work triumphantly, expecting to simply be greeted with a course of meows from Jean-Luc, only to find that my fapping AC was dead, and that more misery lay ahead. Two days later, and nothing has changed other than the diagnoses is terminal, and I need to fork out around 10k to get a new bastard HVAC unit installed. I’ve not relied on fans since I was a renter in the Fan, 1993 or thereabouts, but here we are, condo living without central air, like so many people in happier places throughout the world, including my new crush of a city, Thessaloniki. Finn is back with me, and despite his extremely domestic nature, is seemingly unphased by the wretchedness of it all. We buggered off to the Shenandoah Valley today to see our lovely cousin Madeline’s new bairn, Brawley, and had lunch with she and her amazing parents, and my niece, Cassie. It was a concise and ideal trip, replete with hummingbirds, non-hostile bees of all sorts, butterflies of all sizes and colours, and very solid Mexican food in our nose bags. Oh, and the baby was cute and rather baby-like, in all the good ways.
Presently, we are back in Richmond, and I’m parked at the desk, ramming my snout into this $8 French savvy I grabbed from Trader Joe’s the other day. The nose is slightly boozy, and has that lemon-fresh scent of a newly-cleaned motel room; respectful, sterile, all present and correct, but in a slightly lower middle class kinda way, no offense to the LMC, as I am a proud member of this socioeconomic strata meself. I’m clearing the bean and trying to find some other nasal descriptors, but literally cannot get the Red Roof Inn out of my skull. I’ll taste a bit and find out what happens there. Perhaps a clean palate will introduce something of a non-housekeeping variety? This is very zesty, still a bit boozy, lemon zest and oil, in check, unlike what the Muscat/Gewurz family can unload on one. Nah, here it is integrated lovingly into the pithy booziness, which is a godsend, as otherwise I would feel like my uvula was being attacked. This wine is rather inoffensive, while being entirely uninteresting, beige, and monochromatic. It’s basically like a Jack Johnson album. It leaves one saying “I could totally do this with little effort, but why bother?” Donning my baby blue Caddis readers (thank you Amee Mungo) I see that the label says 12% ABV which I need to ponder a bit. Is someone lying on the label for some dark, furtive, reason, or is this wine just whacked out of balance? I return the vessel to the vermillion border, and allow a goodish amount within, and find that the weight and viscosity does not suggest alcohol above this 12-12.5% range, and conclude the booziness is some some fault of the winery, which I could pretend to fully understand, but I don’t, and I will leave it a mystery for each of us to explore on our own.
My God, I’m back.