2014 Caves Saint-Pierre Vacqueyras, 11-14% alc., $12.99: This is the 4th consecutive vintage of Caves Saint-Pierre Vacqueyras that we’ve brought home from our friendly neighborhood Trader Joe’s, and it might just be the best one yet. Interestingly, like its even-year predecessor, the 2012, it’s a little more fruit forward than the odd-year 2011 and 2013. (The ‘13 is the only one of these that we haven’t reviewed here; it tended to be somewhat hard, and I didn’t find it interesting enough to bring a whole lot of home, much less write about.)

Full bodied and well-structured, this latest bottling gives plenty of what we’ve become used to from this producer; deep, dark color, lots of earth and iron, hints of leather and a generous dollop of fairly rich black plum, black currant, blackberry and even a little black cherry. A solid match for a variety of grilled red meats and hearty stews, it offers good QPR (quality-price ratio) and a nice alternative to similarly priced Cotes-du-Rhônes. You can lay some bottles down for 3-5 years, but there’s no reason not to uncork a bottle tonight and enjoy with medium-rare lamb burgers. We’ve gone through at least a case of this already, and I’ll keep bringing bottles home as long as its available. Find this wine

Imported by Latitude Wines, Inc., Danville, CA

Reporting from Day-twah,

Bastardo

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