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07/18/2018
Tomorrow is…..
Open Bottle Thursday!
July 19th, 2018
Featuring:
 Chateau D"Aqueria
Tavel
Rose
2016
Grenache Noir, Clairette, Cinsault, Mourvèdre, Syrah, Bourboulenc, Picpoul
Tavel - Rhone Valley, France
Tavel is the Rosé of Kings
and it’s good to be King!
Great for summer, this medium to full bodied dry Rose is the perfect accompaniment to whatever is on the grill! Chicken, beef, salmon, Portobello mushrooms even BBQ!
Tavel is a wine-growing AOC in the southern Rhône wine region of France, across the Rhône River from Châteauneuf-du-Pape and just northwest of Avignon. Tavel is the only appellation in the Rhône valley to produce nothing but rosé wine. Said to be a favorite of writer and man’s man, Ernest Hemingway, Tavel is an unusually dry Rosé. It has more body and structure than most pink wines and is considered to have all the character of a good red wine, just less color. It is made primarily with Grenache and Cinsault, but nine varieties are allowed in the blend. Tavel is reputed to have been a favorite wine of kings Philippe le Bel and Louis XIV, the Popes of Avignon, the 19th century novelist, Honoré de Balzac, the 20th-century writer, and is one of the few rosé wines that can benefit from aging.
92 Points
Robert Parker The Wine Advocate
Typical of the best of the appellation, Chateau d"Aqueria"s 2016 Tavel is medium to full-bodied but doesn"t seem at all heavy. This offers cherries and spice, so nice, along with dusty earth notes, a rich, silky texture and a long, layered finish.
92 Points
The Wine Enthusiast
Ripe melon and red berry flavors are supported by a firm bed of crushed stone, then garnished by subtle spice notes. Typical of Tavel, it"s on the full-bodied side for a rosé, but doesn"t seem heavy at all.
Our Thoughts.........
 Chateau d"Aqueria is the standard-bearer of the Tavel region and has been for the last century. Widely appreciated as the finest wine of its appellation. This deeply colored, cherry shaded rose shows fairly generous, perfumed and quite complex aromas of red plum/cherry and spice. Great fullness, fleshy and round with a lingering fresh finish. This vintage is comparable to the great 1995 and 2000 years.
Our Regular Price $22.99
 Special Sale Price Tonight
Only $16.50
or if you buy 6 bottles its only
$14.00
per bottle!
that"s only $84.00 per six pack!
And we have a few 1.5 Liter magnums
also on Sale for just
twice the 750ML price!!
Don’t want to miss the sale?
Can’t make it Thursday?
Call us to order
703-668-WINE(9463)
"Wine is the most civilized thing in the world."
Ernest Hemingway
A Bit about Tavel and Chateau D"Aqueria ........
Château d’Aquéria has been making wines in Tavel since the end of the 16th  century. The largest estate of Tavel, and one of few with contiguous holdings,practices environmentally friendly farming.
Vines have been cultivated in the area since the 5th century BC. Planted by the Greeks, the vineyard expanded under the Romans. Located on a major communication route between the oppidum in Roquelmaure and Nimes, Tavel was the ideal location to develop. Various artefacts from this period have been found, including pieces of decorated amphora depicting grapes. However, the name villa tavellis, which would later become Tavel, appeared for the first time in 13th century writings.
In the middle of the 14th century, Pope Innocent VI, who had a particular predilection for the wines of the Rhône’s right-bank and had those of the Prieuré de Montézargues delivered for his personal pleasure. This winemaker still exists today at the heart of the Tavel AOC. Following the return of the Papacy to Rome and up until the Revolution, wines from Tavel and the region were exported to Italy. From 1737, a royal edict made it illegal to add foreign wines to those of Tavel, as well as four other towns in the Gard, and their winemakers were authorized to mark their barrels with C.d.R. (Côte du Rhône), thus setting the precedent that would become the AOC.
While Tavel rosé can be made using the saignee and skin-contact method,  the tradition in the region is to do a type of co-ferment with both red and white grapes that combines elements of both methods. The grapes are loaded, whole clusters, into a tank all together where under the gravity of their own weight the grapes are gently pressed and the juice trickles down to the bottom. There the juice receives its period of brief skin contact with the crushed red skins on the bottom before the lightly colored free-run juice is then drained off, like a saignee, and the wine then fermented as normal. This method produces what Karen MacNeil describes as "rugged wines with robust, spicy berry flavor."
See you Thursday!
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