April 28, 2016 - This wine got away from me after 4 moves in the last 3 years. A little past its prime. Slightly oxidized and the fruit is a little bit pruned. Some interesting red fruit and rose flower aromas.
March 22, 2016 - I'm finding the wine to be slightly oxidized and massively alcoholic, especially on the nose (the labeled 14.2% seems much hotter than this) with sweet smoked meat, and overly-sweetish dark fruit ... The kicker is the off-putting finish Plastic cork.
January 3, 2016 - Cellar clean-up. Tasty for $10 on close-out.
March 15, 2014 - Sort of losing it now, but you can still find what we're talking about: nice stuffing and great French-your-mouth-feel at first -- sweet sediments w/ that stained and blue flavor. Totally nice ideas from a few years earlier. Then, nothing to offer secondarily and didn't finish the taste.
March 15, 2013 - Very interesting flavor - seemed strange at first, but really added depth to the wine.
February 1, 2013 - On a scale of 50-100 with 75-79 being average, there is no way this wine could be considered anything but below average. It is reductive, monolithic, jammy, over extracted, and completely lacking in acid balance. This is cheesecake. This is Pamela Anderson, and a flabby version at that. I suppose I don't drink enough California wine but this seems to me to be just plain 'no good'. This resembles a northern Rhone Syrah the way a Prius resembles a Lamborghini.
November 29, 2012 - Deep purple. Very smooth, velvety, rich feel. However, flavor is precise not sloughed. Cherries, tobacco. Good finish.
September 3, 2011 - Great QPR, and drinking almost perfectly now. Wasn't as wildly overextracted as I'd been led to expect, both from CT notes and from other recent ventures into Rosenblumia. Dense mouthfeel, nice aromatics, no finish to speak of. Blackberries and some wood, thought it'd go great with my friend's ribs, though by the time we got around to this one, we'd polished off all the food and a bunch of other bottles besides. If there's more to be had, I recommend this as a great have-on-hand barbecue wine -- drinks a bit above its class.
May 2, 2011 - This wine is huge and big in the larger-than-life Shiraz way of being. I found the alcohol wasn't fully contained, especially on the nose; but it could be worse, far worse. To give you an idea about this wine, picture this short and true story. I was on the living room couch typing this note. My wife walked in and sat next to me. She asked if I was wearing some kind of new coconut lotion, which I was not. (Though I certainly could use it.) It didn't take me long to realize the true source of the smell. Yes, she is pregnant and does have that ultra-sensory mutant sense of smell to go with, but this really does have that oak created aroma profile so common in wines of its ilk. On the palate, it shows some control with a medium plus body and loads of concentrated cassis, currant, and mouth drying (and tiring) cedar-oak suck. There's a malt-shake quality here, like a mix of melted chocolate and blackberry malt shakes that started to turn sour sitting lukewarm on the counter. Hard not to think of liqueur here, as there's certainly a quality of that. Some violet aspects that are nice. I expect this wine will go on being what it is for a while, but it will never transcend itself or grow beyond the fruit, oak, coconut, or sugar/malt shakes. It will just taper off slowly as one or more of those elements dissipate at a slightly faster rate than an other, leaving the juice largely unbalanced and ultimately a failure. But don't misunderstand me... this is wonderful for what it is -- perfect party wine for the kids. To me, it's a hangover in a bottle. Up there with the other options that ten dollars can buy, and it really was just 10 bucks on discount.
March 29, 2011 - Purple, opaque, bright
Leather and spice,
Leather with black pepper, even tannins, smoky finish