2013 Levantine Hill Estate Mélange Traditionnel Samantha's Paddock

Community Tasting Notes (1) Avg Score: 88 points

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  6/24/2022 - Rote Kappelle Does not like this wine: 85 Points

  This is the second bottle of this wine I have had in the last 12 months. It makes little difference whether you decant it or not (one bottle decanted, one not). It's happiest time is in the first 30 minutes before the pleasant but clearly fading fruit completely collapses into the unbalanced oak. There's a note of dark chocolate and coffee grounds from the start and this is a character that I really hate. After 40 minutes this is added to by pencil shaving and deep in the background some red berry hanging on like a tiring swimmer in a heavy sea.
  
  There are firm tannins, fairly fine and some acid but this wine is probably best as a gift to someone else, someone you don't much like or care about. I will reserve the right to update the note in a day but the previous bottle went progressively downhill, so like my struggling swimmer, I suspect this one is going to sink.
  
  I believe that a new winemaker (from the wonderful Yarra Yering) took over in 2014 and the wines from that year on are very much better, but I find myself with a nagging feeling that the fruit simply isn't up to the level of his skills and the winery's resources. In the end, you live or die by the quality of the site and the fruit. You can trick things up but you will still always end up being dragged back to the foundations.

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