A Summer Red Recommendation

By West Village Bill

Tony P. and I had the 2008 Fox Run Vineyards Lemberger from upstate New York last weekend at the Slice on Hudson Street. Tony had tried it at our go-to local wine shop and enjoyed it.

The best word to describe this wine is soft. And even though that's not really a quality I'd usually seek out in a red wine, it wasn't a bad thing at all in this case.

The label described the wine as having "a soft and flavorful palate structure." And Tony said it drank "like it was made with soft water."

The flavors were different from any I've experienced in a red wine before. I didn't detect a lot of ripe fruit; there was more a perfumey suggestion of fruit. "It's got some fruit but it's not too fruity, and it doesn't have that freshly fermented alcohol burn," Tony said. "It's what Beaujolais should be."

I'd never heard of the Lemberger grape before. It's more commonly known as Blaufränkisch.

The FRVL was $21 retail. Give this interesting local wine from an unusual grape a whirl sometime.