2006 Cameron Hughes Zinfandel Lot 86 Lodi

Community Tasting Notes (15) Avg Score: 88.5 points

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View Vegas Bob's profile
  • Report Issue

  12/19/2010 - Vegas Bob wrote: 93 Points

  Wonderful Zinfandel

  Do you find this review helpful? Yes - No / Comment

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View rjhilgers@gmail.com's profile
  • Report Issue

  4/19/2010 - rjhilgers@gmail.com wrote: 82 Points

  Another Costco find with the Cameron Hughes Lot 86 Lodi Zinfandel 2006. Picked this one up for $10 at my local store in San Francisco.
  
  What Cameron Hughes says about the wine: Dark, brick red wine with super spicy, huge nose of plums, blackberry, and black pepper. On the palate this wine is a basket of plummy red fruits, a little pomegranate, vanilla oak notes, pepper, and chocolate covered raisins. As this powerfully structured zinfandel opens up it gains additional complexity with tobacco and sweet cigar smoke notes. Despite two years in barrel, this zin is just a baby and will continue to improve in the bottle for many years to come.
  
  Day 1 - On the nose, I'm getting a ton of plum, good ripe plum, with some cracked pepper and a little heat from the alcohol. Definitely a respectable nose for a $10 wine and a promising hint at the taste. But, once this hit my mouth, I had two words for this wine - fruit bomb! I cannot seem to get the plum to move out of the way and let some other elements come through. And, this isn't a delicate plum, this is a dark brooding plum that fell off the tree weeks ago and is trying it's damnedest to break down and get back into the earth. There is some bright berry - maybe cherry or raspberry - but it really is having a hard time holding it's own. Pretty good mid-palate, with a long finish, but the emo-plum sticks with me much longer than I would like. I don't see this one getting any better with age or with decanting, either, as the tannins are relatively mild and it feels like the fruit will just continue to get darker and heavier.
  
  In its defense, the first couple tastes I had were with a juicy hamburger and it fared pretty well. The salt and grease of the burger elevated the other fruit and subdued the plum nicely. So, maybe this is a wine that needs some good grease with it.
  
  Day 2 - not much to add, except that somehow the plum got even darker and more brooding, like it spent the night out with some old friends listening to Joy Division, smoking unfiltered cigarettes and reciting poetry at a half-empty spoken word open mike night. Definitely not the way I want to spend my night...

  1 person found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comments (1)

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View JC Old School's profile
  • Report Issue

  10/11/2009 - JC Old School wrote: 90 Points

  Very lush on the palate!

  Do you find this review helpful? Yes - No / Comment

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View wordstar's profile
  • Report Issue

  8/23/2009 - wordstar wrote: 86 Points

  Nice enough wine, but not noteworthy as a Zin. Better values are around.

  Do you find this review helpful? Yes - No / Comment

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View neurovino's profile
  • Report Issue

  2/6/2009 - neurovino wrote: 87 Points

  A little too lush. Would like to see more structure.

  Do you find this review helpful? Yes - No / Comment

View all 15 Community Tasting Notes

Professional reviews have copyrights and you can view them here for your personal use only as private content. To view pro reviews you must either subscribe to a pre-integrated publication or manually enter reviews below. Learn more.