Last night I drank a very cheap, very big, fruity, tannic wine from the Costieres de Nimes. It’s not a well-known region, but like the rest of the Languedoc, its catching up because the land is cheap(er) then say, the Rhone or Burgundy.

What surprised me about this wine is that it is 100% syrah…usually wines like this are a blend of strange, no-name grapes. Unlike the flabby, jammy, boozy Australian syrahs (aka shiraz), this one had a boatload of mouth-drying tannins following the impressive fruit. This is one of those wines that begs for food: LAMB! LAMB CHOPS! A big rich, fatty chop…mmm…nice and roasted and crusty on the outside, pink and fleshy inside. That would be fantastic with this wine…the tannin would slice through the rich, fatty meat and (conversely) the fat would tame some of the tannin.

This wine…I think it was a 2001…could also age very well. I’ll have to get the name of the producer.