Community Tasting Note

sean7711 Likes this wine:

Friday, April 15, 2022 - A very interesting wine. I had been meaning to try this wine given I had not seen a single vineyard designate from this vineyard outside of the Purlieu bottling. I found a decent deal on Benchmark for this during a recent bin sale and for a 2012, I figured why not take a flyer on it at $120. The 2018 vintage is now at $225 a bottle so let's check out what all the hype is about.

First impressions: Heavy, heavy sediment. Painstaking process of double decanting this back into the bottle. For those drinking now, recommend standing this upright 24+ hours prior to drinking which hopefully improves this issue.

OK, so once that was done - the nose: thought this was flawed. It smelled old, a bit burnt, medicinal that was rather unpleasant. However upon tasting this was better than the nose led on. It continued to improve over 3+ hours, and the last sips were the best. 15% alcohol and needed some time to settle down. Dark ruby red, bit of cinnamon / nutmeg spice. Well integrated tannins, left me wanting more. If this was 10 years old, makes me wonder how a 2013 / 2016 / 2018 will drink? It was an intriguing, if not puzzling bottle after all the sediment and the nose, but ended up really impressing.

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