Tres Ojos, Old Vines Garnacha, Lamb chops

Tres Ojos, Old Vines Garnacha, Calatayud, Spain, 2006; Whole Foods, $7.99; October, 2008.

I read that Garnacha has thin skins so the color out of the bottle tends to be lighter than you would expect. This wines color was a deep, lovely purple. Sniffing produced nothing more to me than a pleasant red wine. On first sip, it was not very tannic. Brigette claimed it was fruit juice with alchoal, meaning it had no bitter undertones and little complexity. After careful questioning, I gleamed that she wasn’t being negative about the wine, really.

Our dinner (sorry, we totally forgot the camera on this one.) began with a tomato and onion salad with a vinagarette made with pare infused balsamic vinegar, Spanish olive oil, garlic, and thinly sliced onion. The wine had set for at least a half-hour by then and was beginning to open up nicely. Dinner consisted of lamb chops, covered in some olive oil, garlic, salt, and herbs de Provence on an outside grill. Our vegetable, this period of the squash, was Red Curry Squash, quartered, seasoned and grilled.

The squash had its own flavor, rich, buttery, and itself, with which the wine was a smooth enhanser. With the lamb, the wine tasted a little sharper, and did not disappear. The wine was uncluttered with the bitterness of young, tannic reds. It was not as soft as a Tuscan wine. It had lots of flavor to meet the lamb head on.

Very tasty. It is a keeper. I am not sure how it would age, since it is low on tannins. At the price, it would be easy and interesting to find out. That is the nice thing about good, cheap wines. They easily allow experimentation.