November 14, 2022 - Very inky, deep purple/black color. Drinks lighter than it looks. Very enjoyable and in a great place right now. Loved it.
April 24, 2022 - Pretty purple color with tart fruity aromatics. A gentle stone fruit introduction. Coffee or unsweetened chocolate mid- to rear palate. Interesting "thin" mouthfeel. Some still pretty stiff tannin. While the tongue sensations are not overwhelmingly fruity, the lengthy aftertaste definitely reflects tart fruit. Interesting and very enjoyable. This wine was vefy enjoyable, bu I think it could have remained sideways for quite a few yoears.
April 8, 2022 - Dark, inky red. Not much on the nose. Very fresh on the palate. Very Carlisle - even with this rare grape. Medium length. A little to fresh for my taste, but still a very nice wine!
January 23, 2022 - Warming and round but not too big. Bravo Carlisle.
April 6, 2020 - Decanted 6hrs. As others have noted, this is really a dark hue of purple when I was decanting it, any darker, it would have been Pennzoil! Maybe it was just the planets aligning or I was under the spell of homemade chili verde nachos, but this was just on fire last night. As dark as it looked in appearance, and certainly had density, I never really thought of it as ripe nor jammy. This was in part to some well placed acidity that was pretty constant from start to finish. Solid tannic structure but less so than a Petite Sirah, more playful too. If this bottle was representative, worth an early look, but if one only has a bottle or two, give it time, I’ll open my second in 5 to 8 years, perhaps longer. Excellent.
July 6, 2019 - At first this had a really sharp finish, almost astringent...
After 90 minutes, character really changed and it opened up
May 29, 2019 - Leftover wine from the previous night. Drank from a Zalto Universal with a fresh palate.
Visually, it remains a beauty with its deep purple, almost black color tone. It effortlessly leaves a thick purple streak with every swirl. On the nose, you get dense and alluring aromas of berries, white pepper, cedar, plum, dark chocolate, and maple syrup. Last night, the nose made me think of Carlisle, and now that I'm seeing the bottle after smelling the wine, I'm thinking, "Yep, that's Carlisle, alright!"
On the palate, this is a huge wine (think of the deepest expressions of Petite Sirah). You get rich notes of berries, dark fruit jam, pomegranate, black pepper, leather, and toasted vanilla. This wine has some noticeable heat, but my focus was shifted to its layers, liveliness, lovely tannins, and lengthy finish. You can just feel its future potential. This is a joy to drink. Big thanks to Frank for opening my eyes to Alicante Bouschet and this rarity!
May 29, 2019 - Opened this at 10AM, which was 10 hours before we poured it. This looks like the same wine I tasted from barrel in 2017, showing the ink staining color in the stem last night when we poured it around the table blind. This is still tannic, it does throw off a bit of an alcohol signature and it's a big wine. Curtis Chen (C Chen) will have a note on this and took the leftover with him so I would go with his note as a reference. This was the last wine of the night, preceded by 8 others and I have to admit I was getting a tired palate by this point, which is why Curtis has the best shot here to tell the story from the leftovers.
May 28, 2019 - "Casual" Weeknight at Viet's: Served blind.
This wine was crazy to try guessing! It struck me as a domestic Petite Sirah with Carlisle DNA, but I could not confidently call out the varietal. The wine has a wild and expressive nose. It was full of cedar, maple syrup, toasty aromas, concentrated red berries, baking spices, and cinnamon.
Visually, this wine was so dark violet that when you swirled the glass, you could see the glass staining. A beautiful sight, reminding me of the appeal of the 2016 Tercero Aberration.
On the palate, it was similar to the nose with deep structure, lovely tannins, and a lingering finish. One of the most interesting wines I've had in a while and my first experience with this grape. Wish I could find more! This was a strong wine to end the night with. Big thanks to Frank for graciously allowing me to take home the rest of the bottle for the sake of science. ;)
March 24, 2019 - I knew I shouldn't have opened this. Wound up tight. Dark fruits with a solid tannic backbone. Painfully young wine. I'm going to tuck my remaining bottles away and forget about them for a while.