Le Nouveau Rouge

The wine

It drinks like grape juice. The sweetness is the point, and it is also the problem.

Sweet grape comes in pronounced, the plain sweetness of juice rather than of a red wine that kept some sugar. A wine would set something under that sugar — acid, tannin, a drier edge, any structure that could answer it. Little of that is here. Sweetness dominates. The glass does not push back.

The impression does not complicate. Grape stays grape. The sweetness does not integrate; it leads, and the rest of the glass is quiet. That is why it reads as juice. Red wine, even a plainly sweet one, usually has a shape that holds the sugar in a line. Here the sugar is the line. You taste it, you keep tasting it, and when it leaves there was never a structure to remember.

What follows does not revise the first sip. There is no second flavor under the grape, and no grip that would make the sugar feel placed. The texture is the texture of juice: soft, sweet, open. After the swallow, the same sweetness is what remains. It does not dry. It does not turn bitter. It fades still tasting like juice, without a frame that would make the ending feel like a wine’s.

The likeness is not close. Le Nouveau Rouge tastes like grape juice poured into a red-wine idea. The sweetness is clear. The balance is not.