Wine Blogging Interactive Edition

My friend Emily makes an excellent suggestion, namely that we should have a blogospheric wine tasting in which Simon and I suggest a wine that is available and affordable, allow people time to purchase and drink it, and then have everyone discuss it on the site afterwards using our delightful comments feature. So this post will suggest a wine. And in a few days, after our dear readers have had time to drink it, we'll put up another post in which to have a discussion.

Our first wine is a somewhat obscure red wine from Spain which we think might be a great value at $10: the 2004 Las Rocas de San Alejandro Garnacha from Calatayud. Calatayud is a DO (an officially classified Spanish wine region) in the province of Saragossa, which is Northeast of Madrid and was part of the Kingdom of Aragon back in the day. Garnacha is probably familiar to most Americans as Grenache, one of the primary grapes in Chateauneuf de Pape. (Chateauneuf is a great wine from the the southern Rhone and can be a real higher-end value if you're looking to splurge--but choose growers carefully.) This will be both Simon and my first time trying this wine, but you can probably expect it to be approachable with forward, dark fruit flavors balanced by earthiness. I can't read the number on the label (pictured in the link below), but I would bet it's pretty high in alcohol.

For DC area residents, the wine is available at Calvert Woodley, which is right near the Van Ness stop on the red line. So grab a bottle, drink it over the weekend, and we'll discuss it next week.

Update: For our New York readers, the wine is available both at Sherry-Lehmann (on Madison Ave. near 61st) and at Zachys in Scarsdale.

Further Update: The wine is also available at MacArthur Beverages in D.C.; Blanchards, Andover Liquors, and Nejaime's Wine Cellars in Massachusetts; and Woodland Hills, San Francisco Wine Trading Company, and K&L Wines in California. For other states, try a search for "Las Rocas Garnacha" on Wine-Searcher.