Cru of Aragon December tasting, 15 Dec 2022

What a great evening at Aragon’s Cru (their monthly premium) tasting, and it goes to show how diverse our individual palates are. Out of eight wines, two being “premium,” there were a lot of individual favorites. Almost everyone liked the two premium wine selections of the evening, a Champagne and a Cabernet Sauvignon. Yet they didn’t end up being our evening’s Crowd Favorites. By a narrow win we finally had a white and a red, both under $20!Sometimes you win because you didn’t do anything wrong, and everyone else missed something. That describes our two crowd favorites. Taboadella “Villae” Branco, 2020 Portuguese White Wine. A blend of three semi obscure native Portuguese grapes that are not cultivated or used elsewhere. The result is a white wine that can’t go wrong, just right in the middle, some hints of both stone fruit and citrus, some minerality, and some acidity. A white wine to have when you don’t know what white wine you should have.Next, Domanie de Fontsainte 2020 from the Languedoc region in the south of France. Same story here; a winner because everyone else running stepped out of bounds. Bright red fruit with Mediterranean herbs and spices. A good pairing to a lot of dinners, or a good burger. Simplicity can be a good thing sometimes.