Check out this special wine and tapas tasting for Wine Wednesday with Cordant Winery at Jordan’s Wine Bar and Cellar in Fort Myers. It was a special occasion welcoming Evan Taylor to Southwest Florida. Taylor’s parents founded the winery. His enthusiasm for what they’re producing was infectious. In addition to his Fort Myers visits, Evan visited restaurants and retailers across Southwest Florida, sharing his small production, hard to find wines.
They are only found at select restaurants and boutique wine shops in Florida, California and Nevada, or direct to consumer. The winery and grapes are from Paso Robles, however, the style is old world. Also, Cordant used to be bottled under the label Nelle with a different winemaker at the helm.
To welcome Evan, Jordan’s Wine Bar owner, Gloria Jordan, opened for a private tasting on her day off. I joined the two of them along with former Fort Myers NewsPress food editor Annabelle Tometich for an afternoon of thoughtfully prepared tapas, perfectly chilled wine and great stories.
We started the tasting with Cordant’s 2021 chardonnay that has a nice mineral component along with citrus flavors and the smallest amount of butterscotch on the finish. It’s a really nice food wine. So is the 2020 Solomon Hills Pinot Noir. You don’t find a lot of pinot in Paso. This one is fragrant, bright, and acidic wit. h spicy red fruit. Only 150 cases were made.
More special wine for wine and tapas tasting
I like the names of the next few that we tried, from Methodical Chaos to Pandemonium to Resolution. These are all Rhone-style blends. A new label debuts on the 2020 Pandemonium, a bold blend of syrah and petite syrah. The blend in Resolution varies each year. Current release contains grenache blanc, viognier, roussanne and picpoul. It is a powerful wine with texture, bright acid and tropical notes. The nose is beautiful. It is not your average white blend.
We were partial to Maniacal, a GSM blend, grenache, syrah, and mourvedre that was juicy, with pepper on the finish. A tad bit chalky, it was fantastic with Gloria’s beef empanada.
Cordant makes 14 wines but only half of those can be found in Florida. Retail prices range from $36 to $70 but can vary across the state. Check out some of the photos below and if you see these wines, you have to try them. Finally, the food. Jordan’s tapas menu is always changing and includes various versions of the items shown here. Cheers to Wine Wednesday.
