About a month ago, Ms Cocktail came home with a wine that she said she had heard about somewhere or other. As with most things wine related, this promised to be an adventure. I don’t always take other people’s word about  whether a wine is good or not. A lot of people I know may enjoy wine a lot but they don’t have that educated of a palate. Therefore, they drink what they like and pass those recommendations on. Let me be crystal clear on this subject. This is perfectly acceptable behavior and I don’t want them to change a thing. In fact, I prefer that they approach wine this way rather than trying to pretentious and annoying in their certainty.

On the other hand, that doesn’t mean that what they like is something that I will particularly like. We all have different palates as well as likes and dislikes. Which is why some of us attempt to describe the wines we drink with terms that other people will be familiar with. It tastes like jam or apricots or chocolate. This gives a basis for making wine selections that are agreeable with our palates. Just because someone says, “This wine is fruit forward with lots of blackberry” doesn’t mean I will like it, but it puts it in the realm of something I generally like.

This is where the adventure starts. Because I may have a preconception of what someone else thinks the wine tastes like, that doesn’t mean that I will taste the same thing or like what I taste. I therefore approach each wine the same way regardless of what I’ve heard about it. Which means that I dismissed the glowing report Ms Cocktail had heard and stuck the bottle in my wine rack and didn’t think much about it.

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For the longest time, I've been avoiding Chilean wines. There were rumors circulating that Chilean farming practices were causing harm not to the environment, but to the workers themselves. Of course, being the great lemming that I am, I bought right into these rumors without doing adequate research. So when Antoinette at Cork and Fork suggested that I try a Chilean wine, I thought it time to revisit my stance on these rumors. All I can say is that to date, my research has shown me no credible proof that there is a connection between farming practices and poor worker health. Caveat emptor.

With that being said, I sat down to this bottle of 2007 Misiones De Rengo Cabernet Sauvignon. This winery is located in the Central Valley Region of Chile which as the name suggests, puts it in the middle of the country. They are clearly in touch with the times as Misiones De Rengo is committed to going green with zero for a carbon footprint in the production of their wines. If nothing else, their web site has a kind of cool flash animation but I would really enjoy more content, especially about their wines.

The wine was a dark ruby color but not so thick that you couldn't see light through it. The nose had a strong petroleum smell with green pepper. You tasted a bit or the petroleum at first, but this quickly gave way to berry and green pepper. This wine was heavy on the tannins and left a puckery finish in your mouth. Overall it had a bit of a rustic feel, not a lot of complexity but it would make a nice accompaniment to a grilled steak.

Some of you have noticed, some have not. For those that haven't seen it yet, there are some really nice deals to be had on the wines coming out of Argentina these days. The area of Argentina producing the largest quantity of wine is the Mendoza district with over 60% of the country's wine being produced there. One of these wines is the 2007 Gestos from Finca Flichman.

This wine is made from 100% Cabernet Sauvignon grapes however, it is sourced from two different areas located at different elevations above sea level. The first is Tupungato which is located at 3,600 feet (1,100 meters) and the second is Barrancas which is located at 2,300 feet (700 meters). The differing elevations (and perhaps differing soil makeup) causes the cabernet sauvignon graps grown in each place to be distinctly different from one another. The juice from these areas are blended 50/50 to creates the Gestos Cabernet Sauvignon wine. The resulting blend is aged for eight months in new American and French oak barrels and then rested again for four months after bottling.

What you get from this exercise is an easily approachable wine that isn't too heavy yet has a fair bit of complexity to it. At first there is a scent of smoke and cigars followed quickly by black cherries. On the palate the black cherries dominates but there is a lingering taste of tobacco there as well.

Overall, this is a finely executed wine which should be able to be found for around $12 retail.