Community Tasting Note

sfwinelover1 Likes this wine:

Saturday, November 18, 2023 - Popped by my sis, with encouragement from me, to go with our homemade pizza and calzone. On the nose and palate, medium notes of black currants, blackberries, a bit of black cherries and a closing note of cranberries, dry soil, rocky minerality, mixed spice, char, graphite and a bit of tobacco. Medium crimson, medium to full bodied, medium legs. Powerful and largely unintegrated acidity, medium++ tannins, no heat. VG+ complexity, intensity and persistence. My second HB after a ‘09 or ‘10 pre CT, this came out of the bottle pretty tight and backward, helped somewhat by an hour and a half in the decanter, opening slowly and somewhat grudgingly. The structure remains pretty daunting, not quite forbidding, and while there’s a lot to like and it became friendlier over the course of the hour+ we drank it, I’d still call it better with food than without, a lot more likely, at least for my palate, to be better 5++ years from now than it is at present (did I ever mention that I think most people on CT drink their wines too young and without enough air? Guilty as charged here, although at least not at my domicile.), not unlike the Grattamacco, and, to a lesser extent, the recent RS. While this was a clear winner for me over the Ridge Estate Cab that followed it, it was blown away by the earlier in the week ‘08 Ovid, which was drinking in the zone, and perhaps even when this hits its best stride, doesn’t have a profile that, for my palate, which would match up. Other notes notwithstanding, strongly counsel holding here unless you have numerous bottles, and even then, lots of aeration. 93-94+

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