Goddammit this fucks HARD. Tremendous banger of a wine from a hot dry vintage built for intensity and aging. I love it...
Exceedingly chameleonic over the course of even a single glass. The nose and palate change so intensely with temperature, I can't help but to point out how extreme it is. At ~68 degrees, the intensity of the leather and tobacco and secondary/tertiary notes is beautiful and steals the show, but also at ~60 degrees the fruit does the same. More than I expected. Anyway...
Dark bloody barn red color, very minor bricking, although the nose immediately suggests its age.
Excellent concentration and highly complex on the nose: Black plum, mulled black cherry, white pepper, cedar, wet tobacco, leather, cocoa powder, steak blood/heme/iron, smoke, igneous rock, wet stones. A lovely bouquet to keep revisiting and peeling layers.
On the palate, tannins quite present but well integrated and well balanced--might improve from here for ~5 years, but really showing tremendously right now, hard for me to hold. Palate shows sour cherry, red plum, leather, fruitcake, baking spice, tobacco, crushed rocks, dusty forest floor. Finishes long but slightly dusty, so perhaps a reason to hold for a few more years, given there's definitely plenty of life.
This is TREMENDOUS