Community Tasting Note

Santiago53 Likes this wine:

Thursday, February 7, 2013 - On first opening faintly herbaceous on nose and bell pepper on taste. Would score it as an 82 at that point. Decanted/aerated half the bottle into a split, corked it with no air left at the top and put it away at 60 deg for a day of slow-oxidation.

Back to the recently opened bottle....I don't much like herbaceous, and I really hate bell pepper... so let it sit, and after an hour much of that had burned off, wine was much nicer. At this point we up the score to an 86.

Next day, we drank the slow-oxed wine... wow, what a transformation. This wine is really good, lots of cassis, very smooth, refined fruit, beautiful claret like color, very nice nose, good length on finish... this really gives expensive bottles a run for their money. Very refined, more of a well-balanced, classic claret than a California monster cab, great with food or alone for sipping. So, yes!! After slow-ox, the score goes to 90+

At the $11 usual price it's a really good deal. Got some at $8/btl... stone cold bargain! I'm thinking to cellar 3-4 cases of this, the slow-ox improvement usually predicts good ageability... I'd say peak in 4 years.

A bargain hunter's delight. Just remember it's not a good pop-n-pour, better to decant and slow-ox for a day and drink it at about 64 degrees.

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