175 Bottles Post 06: “Shh, it’s a Secret”
Wine: Déclassé Red Blend
Right after Christmas, we drove to Tennessee to visit with my husband’s family. As expected, it was a loud and lively time, with thirteen adults, two children, and four dogs all gathered under one roof of a lovely lakeside home. Since we were only bringing gifts for the littles, we decided to supplement our gift giving with a couple of bottles of wine. Well, nine bottles of wine. I don’t have any idea which bottles we took with us, and I don’t think I drank more than one glass of while we were down there.
A few days into the new year, safely back in our own house, with no more celebrations or family gatherings in sight, we decided to open up another bottle. I was making beef stew for dinner, so a nice red was called for. As it turns out, the bottle we opened, was a duplicate of one of the bottles we took to Tennessee, the Déclassé Red Blend.
According to the website, it’s called Déclassé, meaning “reduced in status,” because it’s a declassified wine. Apparently, sometimes high-profile wine makers can’t put their name or vintage on some of the wine they’ve produced because to do so would break their local wine laws, or something like that. So, they declassify the wine by bottling it without the name of the producer or the wine. So, you could be drinking a $200 bottle of wine or a $10 bottle of wine. You sure as hell won’t be able to tell by looking at the label. I kind of love the way this bottle is labeled, though. Something about all that redacting makes it very “of the moment” to me.
In my humble opinion, this was not a $10 bottle. The wine was dry, but also rich and buttery and mellow but almost smoky. We all agreed that we could taste cherry and bitter chocolate. We each had a generous glass, which left about a quarter of the wine still in the bottle. Not to worry! It didn’t go to waste. I added it to the beef stew, along with beef broth, and it played nicely with the seasoned chuck roast, potatoes, onions, and carrots! Bonus points – it didn’t turn the potatoes pink, and it made a very excellent gravy.
