Drink this now: Unfiltered French beaujolais at the Strand

See that glass of garnet wine there on the right? If you hold it up to the evening sunshine that pours through the Strand’s floor-to-ceiling windows, it’s as cloudy as a July afternoon before the thunderstorms roll in.

The special Beaujolais on offer by the gastrobar goes by the moniker Régnié. It’s an unfiltered French wine made from Gamay grapes and is, as our server pointed out almost immediately after describing the 2013 vintage, “for adventurous palates.” 

On the nose, the wine has a distinctly muscadine aroma (like the wines you’ll find grown here in Florida, at the San Sebastian winery in St. Augustine and Lakeridge Winery in Clermont), but the flavor has none of that cloying sweetness your grandma prefers. It’s tangy and dry and has a funk that’s truly one-of-a-kind.

There must have been a higher-than-normal concentration of adventurous palates on the night we were Stranded, because almost every table had a glass of this wine on it. It was excellent paired with the seared medium-rare duck breast with saffron Israeli couscous and arugula salad.

The Strand
807 N. Mills Ave.
407-920-7744
strandorlando.com

This article appears in Jul 27 – Aug 2, 2016.