Borie de Maurel ~ La Feline
01/07/08 18:27 Filed in: Wine,
n'stuff...
I needn’t have been. Meet La Feline. What a hell of a wine! The French have got to be the masters of this art. I say that loosely as this is only the second French wine I’ve tried in recent times.
I’m still coming to grips with this lovely red so I’ll tell you what the Borie de Maurel website has to say about it.
“Let your eyes plunge deeply into this purple robe, with its intoxicating violet reflections. Dare to admire its legs. The Feline’s like that: seductive. Its perfumes, its aromas pass over you like caresses.
Like Sylla the Feline is a concentration of the Michel Escande style of wine, voluptuous, heady without excess,
where each mouthful calls for another. The first notes of black pepper, cumin and tapenade are intense. Then the finer notes, of thyme, Mediterranean herbs and ripe red fruits, an almost fig-like taste. In the mouth its like lace, all finesse and elegance, in a froufrou of soft spices and cherry. But beware! Behind this apparent simplicity is hidden an astonishing complexity that the years will only embellish and amplify, as with a beautiful woman…
This “gallant wine of fine dinners” is the fruit of an assembly of two thirds syrah and a quarter of Grenache, spiced up with a touch of carignan. All the grapes, hand picked from the limestone and clay plateau of Petit Causse, are de-stalked before being fermented gently for a long time. The wine spends at least 16 months in the vats, and one third of it is aged in Burgundy style barrels. There’s only light filtering.”
Only the French could have come up with that, and it’s accurate.