Community Tasting Note
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Dagalaifus Likes this wine: 94 points
April 29, 2019 - Tegan Passalacqua deftly crafts the fruit-forward and even extracted wines for Turley Wine Cellars. But this consummate winemaker also creates more graceful and even ethereal red and white offerings for his own label Sandlands. My Sandlands favorite is his Trousseau. For those of you unfamiliar (like me, until a few months ago) with that varietal, it originated in France, where it is made into single-varietal wines, but is perhaps better known as Bastardo (i.e., "Bastard") in Portugal, where it is blended with a hodgepodge of other grapes to become Port. In both France and Sonoma County, where Tegan, sources his New World Trousseau fruit, the wines are a lighter almost a transparent shade of red, but not (I emphasize) pink. His 2016 effort shares a nose and palate of cherry, strawberry, muted baking spices and forest floor. Indeed, in a blind tasting, I fooled a wine snob into incorrectly identifying the wine as a Monterey County Pinot. But the similarity or confusion with Pinot Noir does not do this varietal, and Mr. Passalacqua's remarkable creation from the same, justice. Indeed, if given the choice between the Sandlands Trousseau and any Pinot from California to taste, I would invariably, always and happily choose the Trousseau. Addendum, while I suspect this lighter-bodied wine is meant to be consumed immediately after release, it's noticeably better after an extended decant, which suggests that it will age gracefully for a few more years. Second addendum, I tried the 2017 vintage of this wine, which is an even lighter-bodied version of the stellar 2016. As much as I liked the 2017, it pales (literally and figuratively) in comparison with the 2016.
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1 Comment
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IzeAgeComing commented:
4/30/19, 7:20 PM - Definitely agree. I just started drinking the 2014 Trousseau and it can definitely age and I think benefits from it a good deal. I believe I've seen Tegan write about suggesting aging for most of Sandlands actually, not to mention that's my general preference as well.