LCBO Sale Wine of the Week: January 19

Citra Montepulciano D'Abruzzo Doc (Abruzzo, Italy)

Sale $6.95, Regular $7.95
Discount (until Jan. 29): $1.00
LCBO #446633 | 750 mL bottle

Tastes like: Bright cherry, pomegranate, plum and a little savoury funk.
Pairs with: Red sauce, charcuterie, pizza… anything nonna puts in front of you.
Good for: Cracking a second bottle.
Alcohol: 13%
Drink: Now.

Why we're drinking this
Montepulciano is the wine you’ll drink while sitting on an Italian piazza, hopefully from a nice and simple short tumbler. This isn’t a wine for deep contemplation. There’s a reason Citra is the house wine at pretty much any old-school neighbourhood eatery you wander into in Ontario. It’s cheap and it’s good. Hell, you can buy two bottles for the same price you’ll pay for a tall boy at a Leafs game (plus tip). (And that’s the last sports reference you’ll ever get from me.) Montepulciano is the grape, an easygoing little number. This wine took a gold medal for “value” at the 2015 World Wine Awards of Canada and it’s on wine critic Steve Thurlow’s Top 50 value picks.

Tasting note
A clean and fruity nose, lots of red and black berries and a little forest floor funk. Cherry flavours with blackberry, rhubarb and pomegranate. Mid-weight with soft tannins and a good bump of acidity, a requisite for tackling that piquant red sauce. A pure, simple wine — well made and better than a lot of $15 bottles out there. Serve it with a slight chill; at the very least, keep it below room temperature.

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