2016 Forgeron Barbera

Happy Sunday!  I'll admit it's been a busy weekend with a lot of chores around the house and catching up on work, so I've been neglecting my wine blogging duties.  So with my Sunday dinner tonight, I've decided to open up a bottle of a recent wine club shipment from Forgeron Cellars, the 2016 Barbera.  This wine is a 100% Barbera from the Sagemoor Vineyard in the Columbia Valley AVA, so let's see how it tastes!

The wine is a lovely deep garnet color in the glass, with great clarity.  The nose is a wonderful combination of leather, oak, smoke and hints of white floral.  The taste is an intense rush of ripe red fruit, cherry, raspberry and currant that transitions almost imperceptibly to some notes of vanilla bean midpalate.  The tannins are nicely integrated, providing a bit of backbone for this normally softer varietal, leading to a wonderfully long, smooth and very dry finish.

Overall, I would rate this wine a solid 8.5, as the Columbia Valley has been producing some wonderful Barbera for a while, and Forgeron produces what I consider to be consistently great examples of this varietal.  This wine would pair well with a variety of dishes, from pasta with red sauce to pork tenderloin to hearty winter casseroles, but tonight I'm enjoying this wine with a perfect hearty Polish winter dinner of kielbasa with sweet kraut and pierogis with sauteed onions.  Cheers!