2019 Domaine du Grapillon d’Or 1806 Merlot – Caladoc

What an interesting find this turned out to be. We were going to buy it anyway just because the two varietal blend included Caladoc, which is something you don’t see that often.

Caladoc is a crossing of Grenache and Malbec primarily found in Southern France. But the real kicker was when we turned the bottle over noticed the back label called out the vineyard being “situated 3 kilometer from Gigondas.” It even says Gigondas on the Costco placard pictured below.

Now we were really anxious to try this wine. Costco’s price was $19.97 and it received a 94 point score from Wine Advocate. A later Google search showed a ton of different wines from this producer, from Gigondas, and all over Southern Rhone.

So while this wine is not technically a Gigondas, and it’s not made from Grenache / Syrah as we would expect, it carried many of those Gigondas-like traits, which is awesome, and we really enjoyed it.

Medium ruby in the glass, dark fruit aromas, pretty full in body; the wine has flavors of black cherry, plum; good acidity and a spicy, peppery finish that reminded us of Gigondas wines.

A really fun find that we’re glad we tasted. We bought a second bottle to hold on to. One of these days a wine nerd friend will come over, and this will be the perfect one to pull out.

CostcoWineBlog.com Rating: 89 points

Costco item number: 1372451

Purchased at Costco in: Atlanta, GA (Kennesaw)

Alc. 14%