2000 Chateau Montus Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh Sec

Tomorrow our tasting group will host a big, bad, Aussie Shiraz night, so I had to go with a white wine this evening. Fortunately, my wife chose a filet of sole in a delicate orange sauce to pair with my wine choice.

My love of all things Montus is well documented on this site, so it was reasonable to expect that I might buy their white wine someday. The 2000 Chateau Montus Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh Sec (say that five times fast) is a white wine from the obscure Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh appelation. As far as I can tell, this wine is made from the petit manseng and gros manseng grapes, but information is sketchy.

An attractive bright amber colour, the first scents on the nose were of minerals and oak, but later followed with some green apple, orange, toast, green olives and smoke. Based on my first whiff, I thought this would be a buttery new world chardonnay, but it was definitely not - minerally, with good acidity and great balance, it had a softness that I presume came from its bottle age. While quite high in alcohol, it was not obtrusive, but certainly gave me quite the buzz! To compare it to other whites, I think the closest resemblance might be a Chablis? Anyway, an excellent match for the fish, and a very interesting and attractive "off-the-beaten-path" white.
14.3% alcohol
Score: 16/20
Cost: C$24 (SAQ)