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My contrarian streak has me yearning for a good sweet red. Do such even exist? And if not, why not?
Fortunately, I won't have to ask those questions. I found one. It's beyond a doubt the most peculiar wine I think I've ever had, but if you're a contrarian that's not a bad thing. It's a sweet Zinfandel, which is usually a pretty dry red, somewhere between a merlot and a cabernet sauvignon. Other sweet reds do admittedly exist. I bought a couple of bottles of a Hungarian sweet cabernet sauvignon, of all things, some years ago, but it was a thin, weak product that tasted like a dry cabernet that somebody threw some sugar into. (I've done thatÑthough it was Sprite, not sugarÑbut what I got was not a good sweet red.) What I've found is the other Coturri zinfandel. I had a couple of bottles of their Freiberg vineyard zin earlier this year, and it was less dry than most red zins, but way fruitier, and I like that in a wine. (Wine is made from fruit, not pressed cat bladders.) Then I tried their Chauvet vineyard, and it stopped me cold. It was sweet, but not treacly, sickly sweet like that stuff I used to drink at Christmas dinner. I don't use all that silly, pompous wine-freak language, but the Coturri Chauvet zin is a strong wine, dark red and about as fruity as it gets. It actually tastes like grapes, not apples, not oak, not asparagus, not pepper nor broccoli nor scrambled eggs nor the forest's ferny floor. It's like nothing else on Earth. I'm pushing it here because there are people who, like me as a younger man, can't abide dry reds. I used to think that such people (and there are times when I fall back into that camp for a week or two) had no recourse but to hit the stuff with the screw-off tops. Not so. Call around to your better local wine shops, and ask for something completely different. Coturri's Chauvet zin is definitely it. |
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