Feel free to drop these bottles on the floor – and the wine, too
July 18, 2007
Wine Critic
French producer Boisset has joined the PET (polyethylene terephthalate) parade. Wolf Blass was first to invade our market with spiffy plastic bottles, and Little Penguin and California producers have really tasty offerings. These plastic vessels look smaller, but hold a full 750 millilitres. It's nice to be able to drop the bottle and it bounces rather than breaks.
Boisset's new brand, called Yellow Jersey after the Tour de France, are wines sourced in the Vin de Pays D'Oc region. Boisset paid huge promotional bucks to the LCBO to launch this new label. While I love pretty packaging and catchy news releases, it's what's inside the bottle that counts.
gstimmell@thestar.ca
Yellow Jersey 2006 Chardonnay $14.95 (France)
Pleasant aromas of spicy lemon peel, lime and apple. However, the flavours are green and bitter, with a fruit rind bitterness. And the finish falls off the cliff – it simply stops abruptly. Thank God. Usually my recommended wines must rate 87 or above. This falls way short of drinkability.
LCBO# 40980
Food suggestion: Pick another wine
Rating: 79
Yellow Jersey 2005 Pinot Noir $14.95 (France)
Tasted three times, all bore no resemblance to pinot noir. In the LCBO lab, it was sour berry and stewed prunes, rating 79. A sample sent to my home tasted of sweaty blackberry, rating 83, marginally drinkable. One that I bought was nasty, with dill pickle, sour pear skin and rotten blackberry, rating 72.
LCBO# 41004
Food suggestion: Don't bother
Rating: Mediocre to dreadful
Yellow Jersey 2005 Merlot $14.95 (France)
I also bought this in a store to ensure it is what consumers are getting. Decent blackberry, cedar and blueberry aromas, with sour puckery cherry flavours. This tries to mimic New World, up-front fruitiness, but is lacklustre. Drinkable, but it can't hold a candle to Little Penguin Cabernet Merlot in a similar PET bottle at $10.95.
LCBO# 41012
Food suggestion: Burgers
Rating: 84