2015 Kenzo Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Ai

Community Tasting Notes (3) Avg Score: 96.5 points

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  4/15/2022 - WineBurrowingWombat Likes this wine: 96 Points

  Wine night with friends (Arizona): Pleasant and pretty nose of soft flowers, deep yet soft earth and red fruits. Palate of deep red fruits, integrated soft earth, soft spiced oak and lingering minerals. Nice acidity on the palate that brings a freshness and lift. Good intensity with a nice elegance here. However, there were times where the wine would show great flavors and at other times, it would seem closed, then open back up with some more time. Might be in a funny phase and may need more cellar time as this had highs and lows throughout the night. 96+

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  5/14/2021 - WineBurrowingWombat Likes this wine: 97 Points

  Nose: [57°-59°] On the pour you get clean black mulch coupled with dark red and blue berries without the sweetness, clean oak as if you just ripped off bark from a tree, dark green brambles, minerals from a dried river bed and a soft yet stern spice. A nice touch of soft flower or maybe even some sort of fresh citrus notes. [62°] Fresh, clean and deep earth with everything else integrated so well, ripe clean dark berries and pleasantly bitter steeped tea.
  
  Palate: [59°] Juicy, deep dark red and black fruits, intense prickly deep black earth with damp and aged oak, a really enjoyable deep bitterness (maybe even dark?), the soil around a campfire that was just put out with water - something like smoke and ash if it were somehow delicious (thinking more like embers), a dark strike of savory graphite and similar spice from the nose. [59°-63°] There's a bit of boozy heat on the mid to end palate but for some reason, it is still enjoyable. With time, fruits become subtle. The earth, savory minerals and graphite turn up a bit more but meld together very well.
  
  Attributes: Clear dark medium ruby. Dry with medium-plus amounts of fine, smooth tannin. Medium to medium-plus body (with time) with medium to medium-plus acidity. Good finish of at least 18-20 seconds.
  
  Thoughts: Thank goodness this had none of the green bell peppers like the last time I had this bottle on 10/6/19 (and I was trying HARD to pick it out). It seems with time, the pyrazines fade away but please take that with a grain of salt. This may be my first and only experience following green bell peppers in a wine.
  
  The balancing act this exhibits is quite amazing. Great profile here with the juiciness, the dark bitterness and savory components playing so well with each other. There's a bit of booziness that comes with this but even so, it's actually enjoyable. Might be considered intense or even aggressive early on but with about 4-5 hours of air time this will smooth out and even gain a bit of weight. This is very much like a talented young pugilist who needs just a bit more time to hone their skill and execution. Last glass was the best (again, no patience here). 97+ now and update in a few years, revisit in 2024.
  
  Other notes: Bordeaux glass. Poured one glass, left bottle at cellar temp ~55° to slow-ox for the duration of consumption of approximately 5 hours, rinse and repeat. Recommend serving ~56°-64° and decant for 4-5 hours at cellar temp. Flavors held up nicely with time and through the different temperatures.

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  10/6/2019 - WineBurrowingWombat wrote:

  Nose: Soft pink flowers from the pour. In the glass, distinct bell peppers, clean spice box, some black mulch if you will and faint red fruits.
  
  Palate: Soft, deep earth with dark red fruits, same bell peppers from the nose, a firm spice, some dry oak, slight minerality and some heat.
  
  Really dark ruby. Dry with medium-plus amounts of firm, grippy tannins. Medium bodied with medium acidity. Long finish of at least 20 seconds. Torn and confused at the moment. The intense flavors display a lot of vigor and power yet so elegant. There's more heat and bell pepper to this than I remembered when tasted at the winery. The fruit and earthiness I enjoyed so much, that lead me to buy a few of these, appear to be lacking. Letting this sit in the glass for more than an hour didn't help much neither (it's about almost 3-4 hours by now). This is also why I often don't decant (and scared to do so) because a lot of the times when I do, the acidity becomes sharper and more pronounced when it sits in the glass for too long. I'm hoping that this hot and green flavor profile is just a phase and passes with time (I'm thinking this shouldn't be a dumb phase since there's still flavor.. hoping it's just going through puberty or something). Not sure if I even want to give it a score to be honest.. but I can tell this is well made for sure. Going to hold off on the other bottles for a few years and hope this gets better.

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