The theme of our November WSG meeting was Cabernet Sauvignon. Five wines were tasted; Sebastiani-Sonoma County 2004, Provenance-Rutherford 2004, Waterbrook-Columbia Valley 2004, Mollydooker-The Maitre D 2006 (Australia) and Paul Hobbs-Cocodrilo 2004 (Argentina).
All of the wines were tasted blind and were decanted for four hours prior to the meeting. All five of the wines are available for under $30. I am not going to bore anyone with detailed tasting notes but I will highlight a few points on the wines. First off, there were no stinkers in the bunch. All were enjoyable wines on some level.
The hands down favorite was the Provenance Rutherford...complex bouquet, cassis, red currant, plush tannins, loam, vanilla and currant finish...restrained oak influence...Nice example of an afordable Napa Cab.
By the score cards, the Mollydooker came in second. It had an amazing fruit focused bouquet, nice weight and texture, husky tannins, layers of fruit from start to finish....but....the heat of the alcohol made it more of a shot than a real wine. This has been my gripe with a lot of Aussie wines, luxurious fruit (often too much) at the cost of insane alcohol levels.
The other three wines were just good examples of the variations on cab growing regions (Washington-fruit, Sonoma-Oak, Argentina-jammy and tannic).
We had a little contest to see if anyone could match all of the wines with their place of origin. Two of us got them all correct, most others were pretty close. This contest might be worth a little bonus prize at your next tasting. It helps you to concentrate on terroir, climate and wine making style when evaluating a wine. It also helps you to hone in on factors you find appealing in a wine to apply to future purchases.
All of the wines were tasted blind and were decanted for four hours prior to the meeting. All five of the wines are available for under $30. I am not going to bore anyone with detailed tasting notes but I will highlight a few points on the wines. First off, there were no stinkers in the bunch. All were enjoyable wines on some level.
The hands down favorite was the Provenance Rutherford...complex bouquet, cassis, red currant, plush tannins, loam, vanilla and currant finish...restrained oak influence...Nice example of an afordable Napa Cab.
By the score cards, the Mollydooker came in second. It had an amazing fruit focused bouquet, nice weight and texture, husky tannins, layers of fruit from start to finish....but....the heat of the alcohol made it more of a shot than a real wine. This has been my gripe with a lot of Aussie wines, luxurious fruit (often too much) at the cost of insane alcohol levels.
The other three wines were just good examples of the variations on cab growing regions (Washington-fruit, Sonoma-Oak, Argentina-jammy and tannic).
We had a little contest to see if anyone could match all of the wines with their place of origin. Two of us got them all correct, most others were pretty close. This contest might be worth a little bonus prize at your next tasting. It helps you to concentrate on terroir, climate and wine making style when evaluating a wine. It also helps you to hone in on factors you find appealing in a wine to apply to future purchases.
No comments:
Post a Comment