Brynn writes:
This is the perfect wine for a hot summer day when your dinner menu includes a fresh catch from Puget Sound — especially oysters.
The grape, Madeleine Angevine, dates its origins to the year 1857 when a nursery in Angers, France crossed Madeleine Royale and Precoce de Malingre vines. The result was a white grape that grows well in France’s Loire Valley, but also the Puget Sound AVA — making it one of the few grapes that thrive during our cool, dry summers and cool, wet winters.
We bought a bottle of Mad Ang (as its called) while visiting San Juan Island last summer for a few days. We swung by the San Juan Vineyards winery and tasted this wine while on our stop. (You may remember we also tasted the winery’s Cab Franc, which I also recently reviewed.)
We liked it enough we bought a bottle. We chilled it Sunday and enjoyed it with a baked mahi-mahi I prepared with a Thai sauce that included lime juice, soy sauce, ginger, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Since it’s kind of similar to Riesling, I thought the wine would be a good compliment to the sauce’s spicier pepper notes, since it’s often recommended to pair Riesling with spicy Thai dishes.
The appearance of this wine is a faint yellow, almost clear color. The nose is crisp and the mineral notes blend well with hints of fruit, making a crisp finish that leaves your mouth watering and slightly puckered.
I’ve had this wine with raw oysters and would definitely recommend it as a pairing with oysters or a salad with a shallot/vinaigrette dressing. It would also go well with Dungeness crab, especially lump crab meat dipped in butter — the acidity would cut through that richness, making a nice compliment.
Here’s what the winery has to say about the wine:
Summer melon and a wet slate nose offers citrus and stone fruit flavors with a clean finish. This Puget Sound grown varietal is perfect with oysters on the half shell.
The 2008 Madeleine Angevine was harvested on October 18, 2008, and released on October 1, 2009. It received an Excellent review by Wine Press NorthWest and Silver Medals from the Riverside International Wine Competition and the Jerry Mead International Wine Competition.
583 Cases bottled April 7, 2009
Alcohol: 11.2% with residual sugar of .05%.
Retail Price: $12
