2009 Bugay Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon The Empress

Community Tasting Notes (29) Avg Score: 92.3 points

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  7/15/2023 - Bodyfxr wrote: 92 Points

  My last bottle. This has been a crowd pleaser for some time now. See previous note for descriptors. Great qpr for a small production wine. I need to look into recent vintages.
  Drink up.

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  8/14/2022 - Bodyfxr wrote: 93 Points

  Decanted for approximately 20 minutes. Lots of sediment requiring a filtered decant. Dark and brooding. A nose of cedar, oak, and remaining jammy dark fruit. Not stewed but more like a jam reduction. The same goes for the palate with even greater integration. This wine is in a great spot in time and us hitting on all cylinders. Drink up.

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  1/30/2022 - jzebrack wrote: 85 Points

  Very disappointing compared to prior bottles that we drank several years ago. In reading other recent reviews, it might simply have been a matter of not knowing EXACTLY when to drink it. Promising immediately upon opening, but not so much a half hour later. In fact, with sporadic tastes during the evening, we opted to not even serve it.
  The bottle was left on the kitchen counter and periodically tasted over the next two or three days, and there was one moment where it seemed better, but, unfortunately, it was not an opportune time to sit and drink it.

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  9/5/2021 - Mark1npt Likes this wine: 92 Points

  My last bottle from the cellar....have been waiting a while to see how this would evolve. Probably should not have decanted at all. It exhibited its best nose early on and same for the palate. Pruney nose but not on the palate. Dark red/black fruit and if nothing else the balance the wine showed was quite remarkable. My mistake for giving it too much air! It probably would have scored a bit higher. Many people still don't realize how good cab can be from the Sonoma side, when it's done well, it's quite delish!

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  9/3/2021 - Decanting Queen wrote: 93 Points

  Zoom with Mark and Jason (Atlanta/Naples/Minneapolis): Another one of my top 3 faves of the night, this time supplied by Mark. When I opened before the tasty it seemed like Bordeaux on the nose, so much tobacco. But then on the palate much sweeter red and black fruit.
  Interestingly, this was best at PNP and then again on day 2. After 3 hours decant the fruit seemed more stewed and plummy and the complexity had diminished. It came back to life after a night in the refrigerator, so I don't know what to think. maybe palate fatigue because we had so many wines to taste? But even so there was some nice evolution overnight and I really enjoyed this one.

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