Community Tasting Note

sfwinelover1 Likes this wine:

Tuesday, August 30, 2022 - First of 2 ($71@) from an auction lot about a month ago. On the nose and palate, moderate notes of blue-black fruit, loamy soil, anise, leather, exotic spice, dark florals, bittersweet chocolate and espresso. Opaquely purple, medium+ bodied, super thick legs. Medium, silky tannins, light and totally integrated acidity, no heat. VG+ complexity, good+ persistence and intensity. My first Hartwell Estate, after multiple pre-Benoit ‘05 ERs and a ‘13 ER, this cuvée was delicious, well-balanced and integrated, impressively integrated, falling just short of the excellence of the ERs with a bit less length and expressiveness. This was singing off the pour, and while I recorked it out of concern it might slip away, it held well over 3 nights. While the ‘13 ER, along with a ‘14 Fait Main LPV are my only prior Benoits so I can’t express any kind of definitive opinion on his winemaking style, he does sometimes seem to be lumped in with a more modern style, and while this wine has a not unpleasant nor over the top sweetness to it (leavened by notes of earthiness and spiciness lending a nice savoriness), there’s none of the heat, vanilla and alcohol which I’ve found characterize the bottlings of some of the other winemakers so grouped. I don’t know what this wine was like in its youth, but in its middle age, some of its accessibility comes from the structural elements taking a decided back seat, and while this wine had enough chops to hang with homemade pizza one night and pesto gnocchi another, it’s not a wine I’d want to match with a deeply marbled steak at this point. Likewise, this seems to be at peak, or even slightly post peak, drinking window, and while I think that good drinking remains, I think it unlikely to get better, and will likely slurp my other bottle in the next year or so. Still, per my loooong comments on csimm’s note on the ‘16 BV GdL, this is a rock solid entrant in the Napa $100- CS sweepstakes and keeps my fondness for this label, which I believe is no longer extant, intact. And while I liked the ERs I’ve had, ironically at slightly lower price points, a couple of hairs more, would buy again. 93+

Post a Comment / View sfwinelover1's profile
1 person found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Report Issue (1,386 views)