Our friend from California was in town for the Holidays and we invited him over for dinner and some wine pre-holiday ski trip. Our meal started off with shrimp cocktail, goat cheese, and crackers along with the 2010 Hugel Gentil.

Gentil is a blend of “Noble Grapes” from Alsace. The blend contains the following grapes: Gewurztraminer, Riesling, Pinot Gris, Sylvaner, and Muscat. The idea is to showcase certain strengths of each grape in an all around wine that has been made in Alsace for centuries. This is a much older blend and isn’t really regulated like other French wines, it’s just been reintroduced to the market relatively recently. Therefore while it should contain at least 50% of the grapes mentioned it may actually contain other grape varietals as well.

Now that we are thoroughly confused….here’s what we thought:

colonelgrape: 70. Meh. I was expecting something more exciting from this blend but all I tasted was a slightly dressed up Pinot Gris. I couldn’t taste any Gewurztraminer spice, Riesling sweetness, or Muscat grapiness. Maybe it was heavy on the Pinot Gris this vintage? Regardless it wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t as advertised. I’m not a fan but for $10 it’s hard to be upset…it did it’s job with the appetizers just not that well.

MobyGrape: 74. The bottle looked pretty cool, but it looked better than it tasted.  When I heard the blend of grapes I was ready to drink something sweeter (it’s highly probable that I tuned out after hearing riesling though).  Turns out that was not the case, and this wasn’t sweet at all.  I thought all these were supposed to be sweeter wines?  Why did you lie to me riesling?  Fine to pair with the night’s appetizers but I don’t know if I’d go out of my way to have it again.  Better than chardonnay, but that’s not saying much coming from me.