Community Tasting Note

Tenuta Stefan Likes this wine:

Friday, May 2, 2014 - Perfect bottle.
Young, dark, purple/black, dense.
On the nose lots of cassis and quite green (green stalk), actually very green. Even some black olives and plum.

Very "South Africa" in the mouth, i e rubber, burnt rubber and asphalt. This wine is "Fast and the furious 10". Quite good acidity though. The alcohol is high. Says 15 % on the label, but the alcohol feels integrated with the fruit. Yet warm and sweet fruit. This wine is not fully balanced, but it is not as extracted as I feared. There is a minerality that lift this wine, and together with the acidity this wine stands up pretty well.
Chewy tannins and lots of oak in this medium plus to full bodied wine.

I must say I prefered the style this wine was made in back in 2004 and 2005. Lower alcohol, less oaky and more focus on the fruit. But those wines didn't age well. I think this wine is better for storage ... if not more than 10 - 15 years more.
The wines from early 2000 went over the famous Hill after 5 - 7 years. I still got some magnums left of 2004 and 2005, and try them once a year, but I've been disappointed since 2011. I do not think they will come to life again.
But young I must admit I just loved these wines. The fruit was fabulous and they didn't have the same amount of burnt rubber back then ... even if you could tell it was a wine from RSA.
88 - 89 points

But two days later, the 10 cl I left in the decanter shows a much better wine with complex notes. Much better 2 days later, and that is a good sign.
Meat, leather, tobacco, coffee, plum, cassis, earthy, some chocolate but still lots of rubber. But it tastes so much better two days later.
92 points

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