Community Tasting Note

wrtgirl wrote:

Tuesday, March 17, 2009 - http://www.wine-girl.net/2008/07/s-is-for-summer.html
:-)
We bought this wine in Walt Disney World. We were at the EPCOT Wine & Food Festival (a purely adult entertainment by the way) in November 2006. We had attended the Festival of the Senses, which is an amazing Disney adult party surrounded on all sides - and in the middle - by Cirque du Soleil. It was wonderful and odd in my memory. I met the winemaker for Bodega Familia Schroeder. At some point, I was assured that I couldn't possibly buy this wine in Kentucky, which explains why I paid most likely too much at the EPCOT Festival Wine Store. I bet it's cheaper than $17 in Ohio, but maybe not. It's a damn good wine.

It was a weird and wonderful night, that night at the Festival of the Senses. But I remember the winemaker telling me that when the winery was built, they unearthed the fossils of one of the largest dinosaurs on earth. Obviously, this inspired the name of their wines - Saurus. Of course, I add in a Disney element and picture a big happy dinosaur, a la Land Before Time, toting around a bottle of wine. When I heard "Sponsored by the Letter S" for this WBW outing this Saurus wine came to my mind before any other.

This wine was handpicked, and 40% of the juice spent its time in French oak for 12 mos before blending in with the rest. It paid off. The wine is smoky, without a lot of overpowering oak. That said, it's still a very new world style wine, with big fruit and big alcohol.

I have a built-in hot "high-alcohol" detector. Over 12% and I usually don't like the wines. However, most of those wines are poorly balanced. This particular wine came in at 14% and while I felt the alcohol's effect, I certainly didn't feel the wine was hot or unbalanced. The wine also brought in a large amount of plum, berry, and spice, complimented by leather.

We enjoyed this wine with a very tradition Steak dinner, seasoned simply with Salt, pepper, and garlic, as well as your traditional Steak dinner sides. The Steak brought out the fruit in the wine and the wine brought out the simple seaonsing in the Steak. It was a simple but perfect pairing.

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