Community Tasting Note

• jkscully Likes this wine:

  December 23, 2023 - It tastes like a Spanish wine made in a New World sort of style. It has that Spanish dusty/metallic minerality and balsamico flavors: chocolate, licorice, fennel seed, laurel, curry, sandalwood, incense, spearmint, and bell pepper along with plum and blueberry fruits. It shows it’s age with leathery notes, though it still has nice fruit. It’s very polished, but it’s also not super exciting (reminds me of Washington State Cabernet in that way).
  
  In my opinion, it needs more acidity because it doesn’t pop like those Virginia Cabs I just opened and it was just a bit dull with food (a roasted squash and seared halloumi salad and an anchovy stuffed roast chicken). The tannic structure has resolved and loosened up and the wine is full bodied, but it isn’t as silky as I can get from top Bordeaux. I gave it a few hours to sit in the bottle with the cork off, but I think less air would have been better. In the end, I didn’t feel like I got the best of both worlds: I got an ok Cab and an ok Spanish red rather than an exceptional Spanish cabernet. This was fun to try, but I think that I would rather stick to traditional Spanish grapes or traditional Cabernet locations.
  
  This was a good wine, but what it makes me realize is that a good Bordeaux wine from Virginia (I opened a 2014 Keswick Cab Reserve and a 2014 Linden Avenius just before this one so they are on my mind) are very good because this wine paled in comparison to them. Better in the larger Riedel over the Zalto Bordeaux and better with less air. I’d say it was in a good spot for drinking and wouldn’t want to age it too much longer.

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