Los Duelistas 2014

Happy 2017!  Welcome back to The Affordable Wine Snob!  I’m looking forward to an exciting year of trying new wines, rediscovering old favorites, and checking out some wineries and restaurants around the southeast and beyond!

I’m starting this year with a Tempranillo, something I didn’t do last year.  The grape is the working grape of Spain and Portugal.  If you’ve had a Rioja, you’ve had wine with Tempranillo in it.

The color of the wine is gorgeous.  Seriously, it looks like garnets in a glass with just a hint of purple.  It’s solid, a deep enough color hide anything on the other side of the glass.  Beautiful.

I’m already thinking about Valentine’s Day just looking at this wine in the glass.

Lots and lots of berries and red fruit will hit the nose immediately.  There’s also the slightest hint of flowers.  (Not what I was expecting, but I’ll go with it.)  I get almost no oak from the nose – interesting for a wine that was aged for four months in French Oak barrels.

And now the good part.  Taste.

Huge fruit on the front of this wine.  Raspberries and grapes.  Honestly, there’s a moment it almost tastes like a grape flavored SweetTart candy.  It’s a seriously interesting flavor I’m really enjoying.

So here’s the good news and the bad news.  It’s kind of hard to find this wine in the US.  But Talk of the Table in Cumming, Georgia carries it.  Unfortunately, I bought the last bottle for this blog.  But I’m betting if you ask nicely, they’ll order some more.

At $10, you can’t go wrong with this bottle.  It’s amazing.  I don’t know if I’d pair it with a steak like I would most heavy reds, but lamb or pork would compliment this wine nicely.