Community Tasting Notes 16

• Botli wrote: 86 points

  February 28, 2024 - HL þema; 2/28/2024-3/4/2024 (Marbakkabraut): Nokkuð sultu- og saftkennt. Talsvert ójafnvægi milli bragðs og lyktar, í nefi var mikið um fersk ber og sætu en í bragði frekar hrátt og tannískt.

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• mrgarreth Likes this wine: 90 points

  March 27, 2022 - A complex, plummy, Christmas cake of a wine. Red and black fruits, loads of vanilla and clove, prune, tobacco. High acidity and high, ripe tannins. It is mellow, with well-integrated oak, and a long finish. This is such good value-for-money for this kind of complex Bordeaux blend.

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• tourproto Likes this wine: 89 points

  March 19, 2021 - So I bought two bottles at the same time and they have both been kept in the same wine cooler since purchase. The last bottle just wasn’t good. It wasn’t corked, the wine just was flabby. Like alcoholic grape juice. This bottle was much better on day one. I liked it enough that I had a second glass. Not sure why they the two bottles were so different. C’est la vie.

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• tourproto Does not like this wine: 85 points

  February 23, 2021 - Very disappointed in this wine. After reading the reviews, I thought this was a diamond in the rough. It was just rough. Nice nose, but that is the only thing I liked in this wine. Too much acidity in the wine. Noticed it immediately upon drinking and stayed that way until the end. Short finish also. Will not buy this wine again.

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• apple1813 Likes this wine: 89 points

  July 6, 2020 - 2016 Craggy Range Te Kahu showed good typicity of Bordeaux-styled blend with interplay of dark fruits and oak spices. The Gimblett Gravels Merlot dominant wine was clear and deep ruby in colour with some bulky deposit. Two hours of aeration allowed youthful aromatics of ripe dark plum, blackberry, vanilla and chocolate to emerge. The mouthfeel was dry and medium-full-bodied, with rather high level of fresh acidity and medium level of finely grained tannin. Flavours of bramble, dark cherries, violets and liqourice were present in a medium balanced finish.
  
  Frankly, there is huge quality gap between the basic Te Kahu cuvée and and the prestigious Sophia label from the same winery. When I tasted 2016 Sophia last year, I was deeply impressed by its incredible polish, classy blue fruits, sweet tobacco note and violet perfume. 2016 Te Kahu could hardly capture a shadow of its sibling. It guess I should have expected the discrepancy from the relative pricing, as Sophia was retailed at the quadruple of the price of Te Kahu.
  
  The Te Kahu blend was composed of 63% Merlot, 18% Cabernet Sauvignon, 14% Cabernet Franc, 3% Petit Verdot and 2% Malbec. The yield was quite generous at 64 hectolitre per hectare. The wine was fermented on inoculated yeasts, and raised in 28% new oak barrels for 10 months.

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Pro Reviews 5

Wine Definition

• Vintage 2016
• Type Red
• Producer Craggy Range
• Varietal Red Blend
• Designation Te Kahu
• Vineyard Gimblett Gravels Vineyard
• Country New Zealand
• Region North Island
• SubRegion Hawke's Bay
• Appellation Gimblett Gravels

Community Holdings

• Pending Delivery 0 (0%)
• In Cellars 129 (38%)
• Consumed 211 (62%)

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