Wine of the Week: Jean-Luc Colombo Cotes du Rhone Les Abeilles

Wine: Jean-Luc Colombo Cotes du Rhone Les Abeilles

Grape: Grenache (40 percent), Syrah (40 percent), Mourvedre (20 percent)

Region: Cotes du Rhone, Southern France

Vintage: 2011

Price: $7.99 per bottle.

Availability: Lee’s Discount Liquor

In the glass: This Les Abeilles wine is a deeply opaque dark-red color with a very dense core going out into a slightly tinged rim definition with high viscosity.

On the nose: It has pungent earthy cherry and sloe fruit with powerful herbal and peppery notes, then underlying toasty minerals, crushed plum skins, spice box and cran-raspberry juice.

On the palate: It is profoundly soft with powerfully earth-driven crushed black and red fruit on the palate at first. Then there’s mouth filling sweetish plum juice, crushed wild cherries, strawberry stew and earthy minerals into the mid-palate, which also has young firm tannins that are not harsh, but very supple and balanced. It finishes long and complex with some smoke, pepper and slight tobacco notes, but it is classic Cotes du Rhone showing great balance between fruit and acidity on the after-mouth.

Odds and ends: Jean-Luc Colombo has achieved a high-profile international reputation for making innovative wines that are memorable and bursting with personality. With a contagious enthusiasm for all things Rhone, Colombo has time and again demonstrated a remarkable ability to envision then realize the potential in the vineyards and winemakers that he encounters. Started in 1994, the firm of Vins Jean-Luc Colombo has grown into quite a marketing force in the Rhone Valley. Today, Colombo produces at least 35 different wines from some of the most prestigious appellations in the Rhone and this interesting Les Abeilles wine is one of them. When Jean-Luc Colombo is not consulting or creating inspired wines, he is hot on the promotion trail. Working tirelessly, Colombo has joined forces with 15 of his top clients to form Rhone Vignobles, an association dedicated to revitalizing Rhone Valley wines and showcasing them around the world. Highly regarded as one of the finest producers of wine in the Rhone, his name is always synonymous with top quality stuff, this wonderfully refreshing Les Abeilles (which means “the bees”) buzzing right along and cementing that fact quite nicely. This is a true so-called GSM blended wine that is made with Grenache-Syrah-Mourvedre, all staple red grape varieties unique to the Rhone Valley and they often — and certainly in this case — produce quite unique wines. It is still considered a young wine coming from a really nice vintage in the Rhone and as such, it would be recommended to open it about an hour before drinking, giving it some time to “breathe.” It will drink well through 2016 without any doubts and should be great with Steak au Poivre or Magret de Canard (duck breast) with perhaps a peppercorn sauce or slightly spicy sauce.

Gil Lempert-Schwarz’s wine column appears Wednesdays. Write him at P.O. Box 50749, Henderson, NV 89106-0749, or email him at gil@winevegas.com.