Expanding to Wine Tasting - Bottle #1, La Petite Perrier Pinot Noir

La Petite Perriere, Pinot Noir - 2012

One of my new year's resolutions (I haven't been a big fan of resolutions as of late, but I'm trying again) is to try a new bottle of wine every week this year.  52 bottles of wine on the wall, 52 bottles of wine... if you will.

Remembering that opinions are like @$$holes, everyone's got one... I started with this Pinot Noir as recommended by my local retailer. They do a really nice job stocking a wide variety of wine, from the very expensive to MD20/20, and I'm lucky to have them and their excellent staff as my primary local source.

This wine was recommended as a "great value" by one of the staff members.  To me, if you're after quaffable, it fits the bill.  It's tasty, light, very drinkable and at about $14, easy on the wallet.  I'd say it's a "good value."  But I think "GREAT" implies more; something quite more than you bargained for, in a positive way.  I don't mean to be a snob on bottle #1, but I can't go "great" for LPP Pinot Noir.

Tasting Notes:  I found it's character delicate, so much so I'd almost say "meek."  I found it expressively timid, not that I was expecting Barolo, but I've been wow'd by a few Pinots (and not just because Paul Giamatti likes it.)  The complexity just wasn't there either - most prominently, I tasted some vanilla and berries like the ones we used to eat off the bushes at my Grandmother's house in Bay Shore, NY, and after a full glass and much thought, I convinced myself I sensed some subtleness of sage.  After that, I found it tastily drinkable - or, as a wine snob would say, "quaffable."  I have to say an upside for me was a general softness on the palate, it wasn't watery, just "too light" for my taste.  It was a reasonable partner to the hard belgian goat cheese I broke into as I started into my second glass - though I've heard it said that the best friend to wine is cheese, but the reason that's true is a subject for another day.  By no fault of the wine, I would have never guessed France in a blind taste-test, but this was bottle #1 and my ability to recognize terroir has some serious developmental need!

So there you have it, I give La Petite Perriere a "good" rating and am likely to buy again.

As you muddle through this thing we call life, please remember that to know good food (and wine) is to be close to God.