Wine of the Week: Terrasses de Cabrio Saint-Chinian GSM

Wine: Terrasses de Cabrio Saint-Chinian GSM

Grape: Carignane (35 percent), grenache noir (30 percent), syrah (15 percent), mourvedre (15 percent)

Region: Saint-Chinian, southern France

Vintage: 2012

Price: $9.99

Availability: Costco

In the glass: Terrasses de Cabrio wine is a deep blackish-red color with a dense opaque core going out into a fine purplish-violet red with high viscosity.

On the nose: There is an impressive array of earthy black fruit character that immediately “attacks” the olfactory sensors with notes of black cherry, black plum juice, boysenberry extract, pomegranate crush and hints of bay leaves and licorice root. There are also juicy undertones of herbs, graphite and wet rock.

On the palate: There is even more black fruit coming through with serious peppery undertones; full of crushed and slightly spicy berry character, almost like a hypothetical mix of berry cobbler with a peppercorn sauce and freshly pressed plum juice that has been laced with a hint of meaty jalapeno, although not quite with the bite in the spice. This tremendous, dry and full-bodied wine comes together with powerful phenolic compounds and oodles of dry-extract to form a balanced, yet nuanced midpalate with yet more spice-laden black fruit and verve going into the solid finish. It is a great sturdy drinking wine.

Odds and ends: It is rare to find wines coming from the Saint-Chinian appellation, because this is a tiny area. But it produces tremendous wines of great aroma and character from a range of typical grape varieties found in southernmost France. While the producer of this Terrasses de Cabrio wine is a cooperative called Cave de Roquebrun, the area is not to be confused with the other Roquebrune, which is a 1,000-year-old village in the hills above Monaco.

GSM was a term coined for the Australian wines that were made to mimic the great Rhone wines and it stands for grenache-syrah-mourvedre, which this wine indeed has in it, but add the carignane and you now have a distinctly southern French blend that always comes out ripe and delicious.

I love this style of wine. It goes great with a variety of meat dishes, perhaps best with spaghetti Bolognese made with bison and red wine in the sauce. Drink it now through 2018.

Gil Lempert-Schwarz’s wine column appears Wednesdays. Write him at P.O. Box 50749, Henderson, NV 89106-0749, or email him at gil@winevegas.com.