Tag Archives: Brumont La Gascogne

Wine of the week: Brumont La Gascogne 2016

Brumont La GascogneThe Brumont La Gascogne reminds us how cheap and delicious white wine from France’s Gascon region can be

White wine from the French region of Gascony, like the Brumont La Gascogne, has never caught on with the wine intelligentsia like Sicilian wine did. Which is very good news for those of us looking for quality and value.

Sicilian wine prices have gone up, even for cheap wines, and quality has become maddeningly inconsistent. That’s what happens when you’re noticed by the Winestream Media. But Gascon wine, mostly made with grapes that the wine geeks consider inferior, is still $10 and delicious.

Like the Brumont La Gascogne ($10, purchased, 12.5%). It’s made with sauvignon blanc and gros manseng; the latter is grown only in parts of Gascony and even there is used in a variety of different ways. In this case, its softer stone fruit flavors play off the citrus in the sauvignon blanc, and the wine is refreshing without being too tart. Gros manseng also helps give the wine the wonderful Gascon white grape juice flavor that I like so much, though it’s not as pronounced as it is in a couple of others.

Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2019 $10 Hall of Fame. Drink this chilled on its own if you want a respite from wintry red wines, or pair it with roast or grilled chicken. It would also work as the wine in chicken braised in white wine.

Imported by Kindred Vines

Wine of the week: Brumont La Gascogne 2015

Brumont La GascogneBest producer tasting note ever? “This wine has very little residual sugar and can accompany almost any meal.”

The Brumont La Gascogne isn’t the best Gascon wine I’ve ever had, and no one will ever confuse it with something to make a wine geek get all twitchy. But it’s certainly well worth what it costs, and isn’t that the point? And that’s because the producer understands cheap wine, as it shows on the tasting notes: “…it can accompany almost any meal.”

What more do we want – just a cheap wine that offers value and that we can drink without a lot of fuss? The Brumont La Gascogne ($10, purchased, 12.5%) is a white blend (gros manseng and sauvignon blanc) from southwestern France that does just that. It’s a solid, well-made wine – tart and citrusy, crisp and even a little minerality if you look hard enough. And if it’s not as grapey as I like, that’s not going to stop me from buying and enjoying it again.

And yes, unless you’re serving prime rib, you can drink this with anything from Chinese takeout to hamburgers to roast chicken to one of those salads made with all the leftovers in the refrigerator..

I took a lot of criticism from California wine devotees for the recent California value post, where I argued that there is almost no value left in the California wine that most of us can afford to drink. The Brumont La Gascogne is a case in point. There are probably only a handful of $10 California wines that are widely available that are of this quality, or of the quality of most $10 Gascon wine. That so many producers in California don’t seem interested in doing this should worry those of us who drink cheap wine.