February 17, 2022 - Enjoyed sipping. Not much nose but very pleasant with lots of fruit and long finish.
January 14, 2022 - Certainly better than the last one we cracked, four years back. This has been in our cellar since. We drank it a glass at a time, coravined over 3 days, then killed off the bottle with one glass each at a pasta dinner.
Acceptable table wine with not a lot going on, but nothing funky either.
February 24, 2018 - Tight, crispy, not a lot going on but certainly drinkable. Looking back, a bit surprised we bought two for the cellar at a tasting… Maybe we tried it very late in the night, if you know what we mean…
It’s a very inky, darkish vin, opaque. The nose brings in blueberries and dark cherries. We had it opened, decanted and aerated for some time, but it didn’t really get any better… Didn't open up. Didn’t actually change at all. The entire time it had that unpleasant bite in the back which we have never cared for…
We liked this better than the Torchbearer we scored last year.
We did down half the bottle pretty quickly, with cheeses, Euro-chocolate-cracker things, and grapes. Then we tried it with our Mexican food… Its light/medium body was overwhelmed by that dinner. Nosing and drinking it with the grapes and cheeses didn’t help either. That’s a bad sign…
We will try the rest tomorrow, see how it drinks on day two…
Edit: Day two it came together, much better! We both recognized it was a much friendlier drink the second day... Should have saved more than 2 glasses.
We have had worse, and if we saw this at a party, we'd drink it.
One - what might be a saving grace - is that we see the older vintages have higher CT scores, so we may just hold our other bottle for a few more years, see if those tannins smooth out and if it comes together.
September 21, 2017 - Liked this one.
September 12, 2017 - Nose of cherry and plum. Light, simple cherry, plum and vanilla with a moderate finish. Easy drinking, light tannins.
April 1, 2017 - The stable mate of the same vintage Red Label Chardonnay, in every (bland) way. Big fruit, wood, and alcohol. Not much of anything else; medium acid holds it together. Also, this vintage at least contained Syrah, thus not 'Claret'.
July 13, 2016 - Fruity...like in a cheap way. If I use the word fruity in my review its never a good sign. This is not worthy of the term "claret." Bad QPR here.