2008 Larkmead Vineyards LMV Salon

Community Tasting Notes (39) Avg Score: 93.5 points

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  12/27/2022 - sswine Likes this wine: 95 Points

  Wow. Nicely rounded on the nose - opened during Christmas dinner as a follow up to a 2010 RC Mt Veeder. Just wow, the merlot in this (and for the record, I HATE merlot) has rounded out the tannins amazingly well - on the nose and on the palate. Nice intesity with dominant blackberry and a definite taste of age and refinement. Glad I managed to keep it for so long! Drank over 3 days

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  12/21/2022 - sdahar Likes this wine:

  Maybe because I PNP but I was underwhelmed and even after being opened several hours I found the wine hot and uneven. Maybe it has to do with storage as the wine was purchased at WineBid. It is for that reason I am not giving a score.

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  12/16/2022 - sfwinelover1 Likes this wine: 97 Points

  One off ($109.99) from the big box wine store a couple of weeks ago. On the nose and palate, powerful notes of all manner of black and blue berries, leather, anise, dark roast coffee, rocky minerality, black tea, bitter chocolate, red and black currants and graphite. Deep blackish purple, full bodied, thick legs. Medium+ tannins, medium acidity, no heat. Tremendous complexity, intensity and persistence. I find myself a regular late adopter such that by the time I become interested in something, the circus has left town with nary of a whiff of the elephants in the air. I didn’t get interested in this producer until a few years ago, at which point the cognoscenti had moved on to other things due to price hikes (yeah, but who hasn’t, and in the secondary markets, these are still more than reasonable by Napa standards), Petroski’s even more Old World turn and attention increasingly diverted to the kinda oddball Massican (no, children, not Marcassin) with its Friuli Venezia varietals, including statements in an interview he wanted to make the label the next Prisoner (ok, even yuck to me) and devotion to NFTs and Instagram, and finally, leaving the label. None of this really made much difference to me, particularly since, retrograder that I am, I was mostly interested in back vintages anyway, and with that said, his work at the label with this cuvée, the NV cab, Solari and The Lark in the mid aughts to ‘16 vintage are consistently tremendous (and tremendously consistent). Back to this bottle: It was delicious and intense off the pour but probably beneficially used 30-60 minutes of air and has held strong over 2 nights (sometimes it takes me 3 or 4 nights to polish off a bottle, but no way, no how is this lasting more than the 2), exquisite on its own and excellent with stuffed pasillas. This is about as good of a synthesis of Old World and New, sweet, savory and structure as you’re going to find, in its peak drinking window for sure, but closer to the start than the finish (the CT window ending in 2 weeks is risible). A great choice for your wine geek friends, if they don’t give you the fish eye for drinking Larkmead, but likely to still be acceptable to your IPA and Prisoner drinking neighbor (if you can bear to waste such a good bottle on him). Solidly comparable to the excellent ‘07, ‘09 and ‘10 (and where the ‘12, ‘13 and ‘14 are likely to be, if they’re not there yet), even though this vintage is generally, IMO, spottier than those. I think that the blend has shifted—although I have a ‘19 NV in my collection, I haven’t tasted any of the post-‘16 bottlings—and there’s a new winemaker, but assuming decent storage, back vintages are consistently bulletproof and wildly recommended. 96-97+

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  2/27/2022 - wiscgrad wrote: 95 Points

  fantastic aged bdx blend. complex aromatics. smooth tannins with tons of dark fruit. still chugging along

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  5/1/2020 - lewisrise Likes this wine: 93 Points

  Nose of dark raspberry and briar. Very Zinfandel like in aroma. Decanted for 4 hours. Dark fruit initially with olive notes mid palate with a dusty tar finish.

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