It’s Friday night here in Québec, and I just got back from the long walk to the local state-owned liquor store. I asked (in bad French) where the red Canadian wines were, and the clerk switched to English, joking that they didn’t have many owing to the “border skirmishes” between here and Ontario. Sorry, folks, but it was either this wine or the Dan Aykroyd, so I went with what they had.If there’s a nose to this wine, I’m sorry, but it’s escaping me at the moment. Although it’s a lush reddish color with just a hint of browning (presumably due to the somewhat iffy plastic cork), it doesn’t smell of much more than somewhat dusty (ready: oak-chip-y) red fruits with a whiff of something not quite right like nail varnish. It’s not exactly appetizing, alas.Rich, full-bodied, and nicely tannic in the mouth, the primary flavor is something that I don’t associate with Merlot, and I’m not sure exactly how to describe it. There seems to be an unwelcome greenness or stalkiness here, which suggests to me that this wine has been chaptalized; there’s plenty of alcohol here (beaucoup de jambes, mes amis), but the flavor profile doesn’t match. It reminds me of frozen Supreme Pizza, the kind with a lot of green pepper on it and industrial pepperoni that tastes of little more than pepper. In short, folks, this wine is kind of nasty. Unfortunately, it’s all I have until I can get into Montréal proper tomorrow (I’m out by the airport in a generic business hotel at this point), so it’ll just have to make do. In the meantime, let’s hope that room service gets here quickly.Jackson-Triggs
Price: C$16.35
Closure: Synthetic cork