Beauty and the Beast

It was the end of a working day last week, and I wandered into my wine cellar in the garage looking for a bottle of Pinot.

From the 2005 vintage, we had produced a number of very small (some only a single barrel) offerings and will have 11 separate single-barrel releases in 2009. Anyway, I found a bottle of one of the 2005 wines wedged behind some Cabernet.

The 2005 Pinot Noir - Mission Ranch, Pommard clone is both beautiful and ugly simultaneously.

Shortly after I acquired the La Rochelle brand from my cousins, we decided to change the packaging to more clearly delineate what we wanted La Rochelle to be. Before our current label design (created by Nick McNeill), we developed a new look that was just horrendous. The picture to the right shows the abomination (kids, this is why you leave the label design to the pros!).

The wine inside the bottle was wonderful. Explosive aromatically (fresh raspberry and cranberry fruit, spice from barrel), the wine had a beautiful, silky mid-palate, open fruit flavors, and great acidity. I had it with roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and corn. Yum score = 100.

Beautiful labels, do not guarantee delicious wine, and - thankfully enough, in this case - the ugly ones don't also describe the wine inside.