Community Tasting Note

sfwinelover1 Likes this wine:

Tuesday, June 13, 2023 - Recent one off ($150) from cellerage operation #3. Wow, what a crazy wine, from a producer I adore. On the palate, classic Ovid—I’m convinced I could recognize it blind—with anise, leather, forest spice, truffles, wildflowers, loam, espresso and dark chocolate—amazingly intense, beautiful notes. But unlike the ‘08 and ‘12, the other vintages I’ve tried, less even on the palate, with too prominent oak and alcohol off the pour, and, while excellent on the front palate, a falloff in delivery mid-palate. Beautiful deep purple with the slightest brown, medium body off the pour, filling out with air, thick legs. Medium+ tannins and acidity, some heat per the below. Excellent complexity and persistence, VG+ intensity. Not unlike the ‘12 but to an even greater extent, and far more surprising with the time from the vintage, this came out of the bottle big and unbalanced, but while the oak and alcohol integrated over the 3 hours I had it open on night #1, it never really hit optimal balance. Much like the recent Colgin ‘05 CIX, this balled back up again on night #2, then after an hour or so, hit its best glide, elegant, perfectly balanced, just not quite the structure (making it really good, but below the ‘08 and ‘12 with food, in this case, broiled lamb chops, etc.) and depth of the other vintages. I’d have struggled to grade this off the pour, put it at 93-94 at the end of night 1, 95-96+ at the end of night #2, outstanding, but not quite extraordinary like the other 2 vintages (I’ll have more data points soon, with bottles of the ‘10 and ‘14). I’d buy more at this price, but, are you listening CS, who’d probably have consumed this during the Bush presidency?, I’d hold for 3-5 years more. I don’t know how old AE was when he made this, but it was his second vintage here, I believe, and his later wines here and at Favia indicate that, while he may have been a talented young winemaker, he kept learning as he went along (I hope to have some Screagles one of these days to test out this hypothesis, are you reading this, my tasting friends? :) ). Lesson here: even an Ovid that’s not the best, not at its apogee, is pretty damned good. 94-95++

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