Good customers of ours come walking into the store all the time and they want to try something new. When we suggest a wine, say, from Chile, we often receive reactions like “ah, Chile, I think I tried a Chardonnay from there once, or maybe that was Argentina..” It is REALLY hard to remember all of the wines drunk or loved throughout our wine loving lives, and the phenomenon is very common. People try a couple of wines from a famous wine region and they get all excited about that region, feeling like they know it inside and out. But then the excitement is forgotten; the intrigue of the wines’ flavors are lost; and we start playing a recollection game that goes something like this:  “Oh, I had a bottle of the, ah, the, oh–what is that famous winery up on that hilltop….the name rhymes with “cone”?

We’re pretty much wine fanatics here at JV, so we thought, hmmm-who better to come up with a cure than us! Think, think, think – what could we do to forever infuse famous and fabulous wines of the world into the wine loving brains of the world? And then it hit us. Hold great tastings of the world with wines that will so knock people’s socks off so that they will forever remember them. Well, we did it, and the memory test results are not in yet, but, man, these tastings were killer.

$76, $119, $95, $90, $192 : when JV says to come taste some Great Rhone reds, they are NOT kidding.  These are just some of the prices of wines tasted on Rhone night. Price isn’t everything, of course, but Rhone wines are hugely popular right now, and the top quality wines are fetching huge prices. And these are just some of the wine prices in our list of 8 Rhone greats. After an evening filled with history of the region, tales of love and war, and sip after sip of hedonistic reds, we just know our cure is going to work.  How could anyone possibly forget these wines???  For an inkling of future wine tastings to come, here are a couple of the wines we tasted that evening:  The Château Rayas Reserve  2004 Châteauneuf-du-Pape  ($192.99) – This Chateau is a shack, to hear Robert Parker talking about it, but a VERY GOOD shack. He describes the wines as being some of the most distinctive in the world.  Here, here. We agree with Mr. Parker (on this anyway.) The Pierre Gaillard “Le Cret” Côte-Rôtie  2006 ($94.99) was incredibly powerful while wrapping you up in its incredible aromas and flavors. The finish of this wine is still going, and the tasting was weeks ago.