2014 Cellier des Princes Reserve Chateaunneuf du Pape

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  This is always a challenging holiday for wine, what with all the green beer floating around, but I figured since this is a Catholic holiday I might as well go right to the top and try the wine of the pope on this St. Patty's Day!  Tonight I've opened a rather young bottle, the 2014 Cellier des Princes Reserve Chateaunneuf du Pape, a blend of Grenache (90%), Syrah (5%) and Mourvedre (5%) in this father of GSM blends.  So let's see how this one tastes!

The wine is a lighter ruby color in the glass with great clarity, just as you'd expect from a wine so heavy on Grenache.  The nose presents aromas of fresh strawberries, rhubarb, floral notes of violets and a bit of green grass.  The taste is mindblowingly different that what you'd expect from the nose, this is a rush of ripe red berries, currant, strawberries, raspberries and tart cherry that just envelop your palate before transitioning ever so gently to some mineral and green tea notes midpalate.  The tannins are soft, providing for a very smooth, dry finish with just a small reprise of tart cherry.

Overall, I would rate this wine a solid 8.5, it's drinking surprisingly well right now, but will no doubt improve with another few years in the cellar.  This wine would be ideal with many of those dishes that are so hard to pair with red wine, like chicken, turkey, milder fish and of course, corned beef and cabbage!  Given the holiday, this is my one day of the year to stink up the house with a crock pot full of corned beef, carrots, red potatoes and cabbage.  The fruit in this wine offers just the right amount of sweetness to counter the salty, fatty richness of the corned beef.  Cheers!