Let’s celebrate International Carignan Day! The last Thursday in October is celebrated as International Carignan Day. Celebrate with a Bingham estate wine to be sure that it is 100% Texas fruit.
15 Things You Didn’t Know About Carignan
Last year, Matilda Marseillaise, gave us a good blog about “15 Things You Didn’t Know About Carignan”. You can check out her post for historical information about Carignan and where it is grown around the world. But I’ll share with you a little about the Carignan grapes grown at Bingham Family Vineyards.
Growing Carignan at Bingham Family Vineyards
Matilda mentions that Carignan is a high yielding grape. Our vineyards manager, Cliff, says, yes, it is a fruitful grape. We normally must thin the fruit to reach the quality of wine that we want to share with our friends.
The late bud breaking quality of Carignan she mentions is good for the Texas High Plains AVA to try to avoid late spring freezes. The late bud break also means later ripening of the fruit requiring a warm climate with a longer growing season which we have on the Texas High Plains. But this is another reason for thinning the fruit to make sure that the plants can best nurture the amount of fruit load it has to attain the fruit’s full ripeness.
One of our sons and his family grew the gourds that you see in the photo above.
Carignan is the perfect food wine especially during the Thanksgiving season. It is a good food wine with a balanced flavor profile and lighter tannins. The spiciness can be enhanced with the food that you pair it with including roast turkey, beef brisket, or cinnamon and cumin spiced rice.
Consider for the Holidays
Consider purchasing some for your holiday season to drink slowly and celebrate with friends. We have our 2019 Carignan available for our club members at all of our locations, Meadow, Fredericksburg, or Grapevine; as well as for shipping.
We also have a couple of cases of our 2016 Reserve Carignan available to our club members while they last and for shipping only.
Coming up in November, we will have an early release of our 2020 Reserve Carignan for our club members. Make sure that you are signed up for our emails to be updated on our releases.
If you are not a club member, this is a great time to consider joining. Our club members enjoy one of the largest selections of 100% Texas estate varietal wines. Many of these wines are always held as club exclusive for our members enjoyment.
For those of you that are not club members, we do have a couple of cases of our first vintage of Carignan available for shipping only.