Cellar Treasure: 2010 Oveja Negra Carignan.
About five years ago I bought a few bottles of this wine out of sheer curiosity (and likely some irresistible sales pitch found in an email from one of my dealers… er wine merchants.) As we all know, the Vinagoth loves Chilean wine… but Carignan? What’s Carignan? It’s an odd Spanish varietal more commonly found in cheap jug wine, or from some fanatical pre-Prohibition old-vine loving weirdos in Contra Costa or Sonoma Counties in California. The only other times I’ve even seen Carignan bottled on its own has been from those obscure NorCal weirdos.
Since these bottles were less than thirteen bucks, I grabbed three to round out an order into a full case to make my shipping free. What could possibly go wrong?
I remember that I opened one and drank it soon after that box arrived and it was just “okay”.
Last night I stumbled upon this one while searching for something Spanish in the cellar. Well, the grape is Spanish, but this wine is from Chile. Whatever works!
Opened it and it drank wonderfully. Mildly peppery on the nose, but smooth and supple in the mouth. Age has worked it’s miracles upon this juice, that’s for sure. There’s another bottle buried somewhere down there, so I’ll have to save it for some future dinner with a wine-snobby friend who’s likely never heard of this grape, nor drank anything under fifty bucks unless it was from Costco. Always fun to do that sort of thing.
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