Fleurie Les Garants, Pierre-Marie Chermette 2006

Domaine de Vissoux.

Served with a simple roast garlic chicken and smashed potatoes with broccoli.

An ideal wine for the dish, the Fleurie was sturdy, not particularly flowery despite its name/AOC, and enjoyable. My wife, who does not particularly care for the Gamay grape, even liked it!

Quite often and enjoyable meal with friends is not about blockbuster wines or blockbuster foods; it's more about getting reacquainted, catching up with the past year, and enjoying a respite during the all-too-hectic holidays.

For that, the meal and the wine were in perfect synchrony with the occasion, fitting together without drama, in a very European way.

In our search for vinous superlatives we often overlook the quieter wines, the wines that shine with food, and simple food at that. Our mistake.

Thanks for notes, I like Vissoux/Chermette. NEver seen this bottling, I usually get the BV VV and the Fleurie Poncie. Is this a single vineyard?

Thanks for notes, I like Vissoux/Chermette. NEver seen this bottling, I usually get the BV VV and the Fleurie Poncie. Is this a single vineyard?

Yes, and from what I understand, Dale, it's one of the highest elevation Fleurie. Interestingly enough, it used to be Moulin-a-Vent many years ago. Which makes sense, because I think this had more M-a-V style than what I normally think of Fleurie---more tannic (although not excessively or screechily so), less perfume, more fullness in the middle palate, and a bit of violets-sprinkled-with-pepper taste, all a little subdued.

I am a big fan of this wine. Hoke describes if just right.