2006 Araujo Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Eisele Vineyard
Community Tasting Note
sfwinelover1 wrote:
Wednesday, August 24, 2022 - One off ($131 for a .375) from a pre-birthday mixed case from large Napa cellarage operation #1. Briefer note here than usual for reasons that will be clear below. On the nose and palate, nice medium notes of crème de cassis, black cherry, blackberry, leather, anise and tobacco. Medium+ bodied, medium- silky tannins, no present acidity. VG+ complexity, good persistence, medium intensity. Completely integrated with a lovely creamy texture, solid fruit and some interesting secondary notes on the pour, this wine was already far more mature than I’d have had any reason to expect—all the more so in light of the decade older, and generally less expensive wines I drank the prior Friday—so I kept it corked as I drank it. While the first glass didn’t have the structure I’d have expected for a wine of this reputation, age and price point, it was a really good drink (low to mid 90s), but after the bottle had been opened (albeit resealed) for 30-45 minutes, absolutely all of the life drained out of it, such that, as I described it, it tasted like a $5-10 Lodi blend of CS, Zin and Petite Sirah you might find at Trader Joe’s. Not horribly unpleasant, but zero interest, zero varietal typicity, something, even at my relatively low level of the ether compared to my CT friends, more suitable for cooking, if that, than drinking, a mid 80s wine at best. Since I’d not saved the remainder, the vendor was initially reluctant to refund my purchase price—just the second time in my life I’d requested a refund for a purchase—but after a couple of calls, graciously did so, so I look forward to giving them much more business, with what I’m sure what will be mutually better results, in the future.
It’s hard to know what to do with this bottle from a CT category standpoint. I did like the first glass, which showed some, but I suspect not nearly all, of what this vintage of this bottling had at an earlier age, but by the end of the split, I’d have gone in exactly the opposite direction. Likewise on scoring, while some of my bottles have lost some steam, particularly over the course of several nights (and others, conversely, have been tough on the pour but have improved noticeably thereafter), the disparity here seems too great to put a numeric score on this. This is my first Araujo cabernet in 20+ years (I’ve had a few vintages of the Syrah in the interim), and I’d really looked forward to it; in fact, the case just arrived yesterday, and this was the first bottle I popped. I did see a couple of other notes, most notably CT friend srh’s from a couple of years ago, talking about how advanced this wine seemed vs. his expectations, so I’m wondering if there might be an issue, as 16 years for this bottling doesn’t seem like it should take it to this point, all the more so considering the relatively youthfulness of the decade older wines I drank last Friday. Anyway, this producer remains on my radar, all the more so in light of recommendations from trusted CT friends, although I’ll likely be wary of this vintage, particularly in this format.
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Comment posted by bsumoba:
8/24/2022 2:06:00 PM - Sorry to hear about this wine. I never had the 06', but the 05' was great a couple years back and it wasn't showing any signs of stopping. Hopefully it is just bottle variation and not bad cellarage. I bought a 3 pack of 10' Abreu Madrona and the first bottle was a little disappointing. Not bad, but not what I expected. I know with older wines, they can just disappear in a heartbeat, but for a 16 yo bottle of this pedigree, I wouldn't expect it to go out like it did for you.
Comment posted by sfwinelover1:
8/24/2022 9:35:00 PM - B, I like to drink a lot of older BDX varietals, whether from Napa, France or Tuscany, and while I’ve been buying them for a while so I have older bottles I’ve stored, I do end up buying pretty regularly from secondary sources, even private party purchases. In general, I’ve had great luck, which has often led to greater diversity and prices than I’d have easily gotten from buying primarily from wineries. And while I’ve had the occasional clunker throw in, this would have seemed unlikely to be that one, considering the producer, the vintage being a pretty good one not that long ago and the source, Benchmark, which makes a point of talking about how thoroughly they diligence the third party wines they sell (as an interesting aside, one of the wines in the almost $2k case, a lot at least for my wine spend, I bought from them was a ‘10 Abreu (but a Howell Mountain; hopefully works out better!). The Araujo definitely showed glimpses of the great wine it was at some point, and too many people I trust on CT love this producer for me to let another 20 years, which I may or may not have anyway, go by before I pop my next Araujo cab. But I was smiling when I was drinking my ‘10 Clarendon Hills Hickenbottom Cab tonight, which, with its soiled label, I bought for a bit over $20, thinking about our exchange with cs about drinking high end producers you know (I’ll put more about this in my TN when I finish the wine tomorrow); I’m enjoying it a lot more so far than the end of the Araujo (I know, not a fair comparison, since the Araujo had an issue at some point in its life). While there’s not much that beats drinking top stuff from the producers you mentioned, finding a really great qpr wine at a tenth the price in the dark corners of the internet does give me a lot of pleasure. Cheers!