Terrisses navidad

Cazottes “Domaine des Terrisses” 2007 Gaillac (Southwest France) – On one of the various wine fora a few weeks ago, someone asked if pyrazines were considered a flaw in Bordeaux. That the question was even asked made me a bit sad for a moment. A wine with the cabernets in it, and pyrazines are now considered a flaw? Must we eradicate beautiful greenness from every single wine on the planet, not stopping until everything tastes like low-acid zinfandel? Well, the question says a lot about Bordeaux in 2010, but for those who might experience a similar shudder, there are wines like this: not only green-edged, but expressing a fair amount of puréed Kermit at the core, as well. But not, in what is unfortunately a decreasingly popular sense, underripe. Just…you know, green, and all the better for it. The tannins are a little scrappy and edgy, the acid prominent, there’s peppercorn and dark, rough, undereducated fruit, and the finish feels like it might want to start a little barroom brawl rather than drift slowly into the night. What precedes is a long-form, convoluted way of saying that I like this a lot. (11/10)