Plonk Wine Club is a wine subscription box offering 2, 4, or 12 bottles per month in either a red, white, or mixed shipment. Plonk specializes in curated artisanal, small batch, rare, and sustainably grown boutique wines.
It is February, I’m told, but it doesn’t feel like here in the South, where it’s routinely hitting 70 degrees. Now, don’t get me wrong – I LOVE 70 degrees. 70 degrees is amazing. But 70 degrees in February concerns me for 100 degrees in June. There’s probably some other stuff happening in the world that concerns me, too. And what better recourse when facing existential dread than to drink wine?
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This month, I received the 2-bottle mix. Plonk prides itself on finding small batch, organic, and other interesting wines that you might not discover on your own. Each wine comes with informative tasting notes and recipe ideas, which now come in postcard form instead of a printed sheet. You can get full recipes at the Plonk website.
The first wine was the 2015 Pfeffingen Scheurebe Dry.
This bottle is of the tall Reisling variety, and it turns out that Scheurebe is, in fact, the child of a Reisling’s arranged marriage. Unlike a Reisling, however, which can be cold and minerally (in dry versions), this wine explodes on the nose with bright floral and tropical fruit. It’s weightier in the mouth than you might expect, given its light gold color and heritage. It has a very attractive roundness to the flavor, which leads with that tropical fruit/pineapple but shades into citrus and finishes with stone and just the barest hint of blackberry. This is a really fascinating wine! I was three sips in before I knew it, just trying to catch all of the flavors. It is nice and dry, and would complement a whole range of foods, from shellfish to spicy Thai to risotto. I never would have picked this up on the shelf, and that’s what so cool about Plonk – I love trying interestingly curated selections. My husband and I put away this bottle while cooking (and eating) dinner on a Friday night. (Chicken stir fry, for the record). Serve it cold.
Our next wine was the 2015 Chateau de Saint-Amour.
Ah, a Saint-Amour for February, get it? Well, I LOVE a good Beaujolais, so I’ll raise a glass to the clever placement of the wine this month. So, Beaujolais is, of course, not be confused with Beaujolais Nouveau; Nouveau is the just-barely-not-juice wine that hits U.S. markets right before Thanksgiving. It’s gotten a bad rap for good reason – most of it is junk. True Beaujolais, however, is a lovely fruit-forward wine with a spring load of tannins ready to smack you in the back of the throat. It’s great. This Saint-Amour is bright berry in the glass with a nice swirl of fuchsia around the edge. It has a gorgeous cherry nose with a little spice lingering in the background. It has a silky mouthfeel that starts like a fruit bomb with berry and cherry but swings rapidly over to a tart, tannic finish that lingers. This is super tasty stuff. Your “I only drink Pinot Noir” friends might like to stretch their palates a bit with this wine – it’s still fruity but has a lot more structure than they’re probably used to. This went beautifully with our pork tenderloin, and it would also be great with chicken confit, or even a hearty pasta dish. We drank it just barely off-chill. This is a good one!
And that was our February Plonk selection! Two thumbs up for wine in a sometimes scary world. I really look forward to getting my Plonk box each month for the thoughtful and interesting wines. I can’t wait to see what we get next month!
What do you think about Plonk? Are you drinking more wine in 2017? Tell us in the comments below!
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