2012 Allegro Winery Chambourcin

 I'm sure some of you know the love/hate relationship I've had with Chambourcin.  Not sure what made me pull this old bottle out tonight, but I did.  OK, maybe it had something to do with Mike Fiore pulling a 1989 out of his cellar.  I'm not in his league when it comes to Chambourcin, but I'll at least throw in my $.02 on it.

 

Back in 2012, we were still doing our glossy, musical instrument-inspired labels.  This one was a guitar because I always thought that Chambourcin wasn't a really serious grape and therefore it shouldn't be a violin or cello or something else serious.  Not sure I quite agree with that now.  We loved those images, and they worked really well in our tasting room and on our wall of wine.  But we found that when they sit on a shelf with other wines (or on someone's table) they didn't quite have the same cache.  

There's a story about me and Emery going to Total Wine in Maryland to do label research before we decided to re-design our labels.  I remember putting a bottle of ours on a shelf and wandering away someplace.  When I went back to find it, I couldn't.  Man, that hurt.  And was way more telling than I would like to admit to.  Hence, our current label design.

I was really trying to be as frugal as possible back then.  We had a printer that was using flexo-printing for us with four color plates.  I realized that if I put the vintage on the back only (and not on the front) I could save about $120 per wine label each year.  That was huge, so that's why the vintage isn't on the front.

Also, I had a theory that people didn't read back labels.  To prove that fact, I wrote these short half-poetic haiku-ish three-line vague sentences that were supposed to convey something about the wine.  The one for Chambourcin (being a "cross" between French and American grapevines) was par for the course.  I don't think a single customer ever said anything about them.  It's one thing to piss someone off for what you wrote, but deafening silence is even worse.  It meant no one even had the heart to say anything they were so non-plussed by what they read (if they read it all).  Suffice it to say, I stopped doing these pretty quickly (and went even more minimalistic in the future.)

Back to Chambourcin: I wrote a blogpost (my most read post of all time) in 2012.  (Here's the link: https://allegrowines.blogspot.com/2012/02/my-wife-is-freak.html)  I remember a colleague of mine in a meeting insinuating that my post might have the distinction of someone bringing a libel suit against me for all the bad things I was saying about Chambourcin.  Believe me, the post doesn't say anything bad about Chambourcin per se, just about bad Chambourcin wines.  Me thinks the winemaker protested too much (and hath a skin that is not thick.)  Now, as for what I would tell my customers about Chambourcin in the cellar, that might have warranted libel, but luckily what happens in the cellar stays in the cellar.

This is all a long-winded way of answering the question: is the 2012 any good any more?  Well....it's fine.  It's always been fine.  It's a bit past, has some oxidized notes to it.  But it's fine.  Color's not so great, aromas are ok, but it's fine.  Tannins are non-existent, acid it still a bit high for me, but it's fine. Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.

Fine. 

And for me, that's always been the problem with Chambourcin.  It's strength is that in weak vintages, Chambourcin makes really nice wine.  And in great vintages, it makes really nice wine.  

Will it blow your socks off?  Nope.  

Will it disappoint you?  Nope.

Chambourcin is the safe choice.  The bran muffin of wines when what you really want is Schwarzwaelder Kirschtorte.