American Elite Bubbly-Gruet Blanc de Noirs

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Well hello. Domain Dave, cheapwinefighter.com with another uh podcast for a wine we wrote up on the cheapwinefighter.com website. Today we've got a um a brand anyway that we've done many of. Uh this is the Groettes Blanc di Noirs. Blanc de Noir translates uh from French to white from black or blacks. For some reason, French farmers thought purple blue grapes were black. I don't know why. But this is a um champagne-style bubbly with a th what uh what is it 82% uh noir and 18% Chardonnay. Gruet was founded by Gilbert Gruet, who has a or had a champagne house in France, in Champagne, France. He he I think he had it since the 30s. And um in the 80s, he heard about a French wine community in the uh mountains of New Mexico that were saying some pretty good things about the grapes that can be growing up in the mountains. And he went there and he liked it, and he started Gruet um as an offshoot of his champagne, um champagne winery, and he made sparkling wine uh from New Mexico grapes. I think they were grown in uh truth and or consequences, New Mexico. And while that sounds like something that's kind of crazy, Gilbert um passed away in 1999, and by 1999 that year he sold one million bottles of his wines. It wasn't crazy. So um, being successful, there was a limit to how many bottles he could get out of New Mexico grapes. So um after he passed Precept Wines, which is the largest independent uh wine company in the Northwest Oregon, Washington State, not California, but up that way, purchased them. They uh they now own Gruette, and for a long time they let the uh not they didn't let, but the Gourette family ran the winery, and I'm not still sure if they do, but there's no longer Gruette making the wine, they have a new winemaker. So this isn't the same. I mean, the the sourcing is different. Um last five or six years. The sourcing is different if you if you thought you knew Gourette, well, this might be a little bit different because the sourcing is different, the winemaker's different. So um, even if you are familiar, you might not be familiar. You know, it might be different. Now, I've tasted this wine and I like it. I'm gonna take it. This is a value wine that is a good alternative to real champagne. Just took a sip. It has really nice, interesting flavors. Um, it has a finish. There was like on the finish is like lemon and nectarine on the finish. It has a mid-pallet, it does all those things. It's crisp, it's clean. Is it the same as champagne wines? I don't know about that. Is it less expensive? I think I paid $15.99 for this wine. That's a good price for a quality champagne or a champagne-style wine, a sparkling wine. You can't really call it champagne. It's against the law. I don't want to break no law. I just took another sip. I mean, it's that good. It's got um it's got uh like red hard candies going on. Not sweet, but there's but that Chardonnay, no, the Pinot Noir, I'm sorry. The Pinot Noir. And I'm thinking that the Pinot Noir probably either comes from um New Mexico or California, and maybe the Chardonnay comes from Washington because they do good Chardonnay up there. Um and they have a they have a sister wine company up there they can get, I think brown, brown with the E is their sister, you know, Washington State company winery, and I think they they're making wine for this, so it's sourced differently, but in my mind I can't actually say that adding Washington State and um Northern California grapes to New Mexico grapes makes the wine worse, though it was a very good bubbly when it was just New Mexico. I I went to a tasting one time with about 12 different champagnes, and it was just people, you know. Uh it was a store tasting, not wine stops, and uh the one that won was a $30 uh gurette, it was a reserve wine that only came out once in a while. I don't think it's around anymore, but it won the whole shebang against $80 wines, so just took another sip. So Gourette is a wine you see you've been seeing since 1984. It's a bubbly, it's uh it's an American bubbly since it's from multiple states, it's from New Mexico, Washington, and California. And a lot of times you see American on there, and it's like, oh no. Why did they source it that way? But this one it makes sense because they were purchased by Precep. Precep has the grapes from that area, and New Mexico's got the that. The wine's still made in New Mexico, still made at the winery, still made in bottled. And another thing is um second fermentation, that's um I have an explanation on the website, cheapwine butter.com website. It's 21 months. That's longer than minimum in champagne, France. 21 months, they call it uh second fermentation, it's trendy to call it triage now. And that's where uh the still wine is bottled, they they um the bottle, they add a little bit, measured amount of yeast and sugar to put the top back on it, and there you go. And then 21 months later, after turning a quarter turn every three or four days, you got yourself some bubbling. And in this case, you got yourself some really good value price bubbling. So there you go. It's the Gruette Blanc D Noirs. They have they have all of them, they have the just the regular Brute, which is the blend, they have uh the Chardonnay one, they have different, they all have different one. Uh, this is one I missed. I haven't had the uh uh the the the and rose is mostly uh Pinot Noir too. I hadn't had the I tend to like uh Pinot Noir bubbly the best. Not that I dislike any of it, but uh so there you go. Adios Keep it cheap domain. Dave, I've got a Cote d'Arone white blend coming up. Usually in Cote d'Orone you get red. We're gonna see what the whites are about. So Adios Keeper Cheap, I'll be talking to you in a couple days. Bye bye.