Popped and poured this at Nomad Pizza tonight, after finishing off the last of a third of a bottle of ’06 Kosta Browne pinot noir Koplen Vineyard. Popped and poured, full knowing that this was not going be finished, also knowing that I could throw a vacuum on it overnight, and put it back into the cellar to get some air. This had a nice ruby/purple color in the glass.
I did a quick rinse on my glass with some table water and dumped it out, and then proceeded to swirl and aerate this in the glass for about 5 minutes while I gave it a few sniffs here and there. Sweet creamy vanilla nose, with hints of jammy red fruits. Raspberry, currants, black cherry, and blackberry dominate the nose, but there is a bit of alcohol on the nose as well. Obviously, this wine is young and will continue to integrate with time. Secondary nuances of cedar, mocha, and spice round out the nose.
On the palate, this definitely is definitely young, and definitely tight. This wine could easily use 4-6 hours in a decanter. Even so, I didn’t have the time, so it is what it is. Nice blackberry and currants on the palate, with that creamy sweet vanilla from the oak that sort of dominates at this point. Again, air will help this mellow out, and I will be curious to see how this is tomorrow. Definitely a new world fruit forward cab, and there is nothing wrong with that at all. The fruit is ripe, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that it is over extracted. The finish has some alcohol and tannins, again suggesting that this needs tome sideways time in the cellar, or at a minimum a few hours of air.
Day 2: I put a vacuum on the bottle over night and put it in the refrigerator, just so I could taste this on day 2. Today the nose was showing much of the same as it warmed up in my glass. On the palate, the wine seemed to lose quite a bit of structure, so it might be possible that the vacuum was bad. Even so however, the alcohol has settled out, and the creamy sweetness has settled out some as well. The flavors are nice, and the tannins are chewy, but it is just missing something. All in all, I’d rate this wine around 84-85 points, and it makes for a decent QPR.
The funniest thing about this wine is the fact that it is getting a lot of buzz on Wine Berserkers right now. Check out the thread at: http://wineberserkers.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=28208 I had no idea we even had this wine until I was going through the 6 cases or so in the corner of our cellar, where we have boxes of wines that need to be entered into CellarTracker. A lot of these wines are cheap ’07 Napa cabs that we have bought based on the vintage. Unfortunately with these, there wasn’t a receipt in the box, so I have no idea where they came from. In all honesty, I have no idea if I picked these up, or if Zelda picked these up.
At the end of the day, this makes for a decent QPR, and I am sure we’ll be opening plenty more of these in time. Even so, I will decant the next one for a good 4 hours before we plan on drinking it! Cheers! -F. Scott
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