Great news, everybody! Wine Folly, my favorite site to link to here, have kicked off their own proprietary wine club! So I canceled the WineAccess club I was in and went with this one. It’s more expensive: it’s every month, and $150 for a shipment of four bottles. But every month there’s a live tasting with the team from Wine Folly, including founder and sommelier Madeline Puckette.
My first shipment arrived a few weeks ago, and tonight I pulled out 2021 Domaine de Durban Beaumes-de-Venise. It comes to us from the southern Rhône, and it’s a grenache/syrah/mourvèdre (GSM) blend. This one has just a little mourvèdre and 70% grenache.
The color is garnet and purple, and there’s black fruit on the nose. On the palate I get more blackberry, black cherry, and a bit of rosemary.
It went well with the new olive and basil pesto (nom!) I picked up at Trader Joe’s the other day! I threw some browned sausage in with it and served it over pasta.
Price-wise, I could probably get this cheaper from other sites, but it doesn’t look like the kind of thing I would find at shops near me. Princeton Corkscrew, the first place I’d try for smaller-producer French wines, doesn’t seem to carry anything from the Rhône at all (which seems weird?), and Joe Canal’s doesn’t have this specific one. And you’re paying for the team’s hand-picked selections and their personal involvement. You can also pause your subscription for one or two months; I’m curious how many times you can do that. Definitely worth trying for a bit. I’ll report back and see how I feel about it!