2015 Tabalí Cabernet Franc Reserva Especial

Community Tasting Notes (1) Avg Score: 87 points

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  2/10/2018 - forceberry wrote: 85 Points

  14,5% alcohol, 5,2 g/l acidity. Tasted blind in VV.
  
  Fully opaque blackish purple-red color. Dark-toned and savory nose with aromas of dark forest fruits, some roasted meaty tones, a little bit of peppery spice and a vegetal hint of cooked bell pepper. The wine is full-bodied, ripe and rather hot on the palate with rich flavors of plums, sweet black cherries, some peppery spice, a little bit of vegetal leafy character and a hint of blueberry jam. Overall the wine feels big, extracted and quite tannic with firm astringent grip taking care of the structure - the rather modest acidity contributes very little to anything here. The finish is hot, somewhat flabby yet quite tough with stern, grippy tannins. There are rich flavors of ripe blackberries, black cherries and sweet plums along with lighter tones of smoke, fresh blackcurrants and a hint of toasty smoke.
  
  A big, stern and rather muscular bruiser of a wine that shows surprisingly nicely that ripe, extracted fruit character without much obfuscating oak character getting in the way. However, the wine suffers from the high alcohol and low acidity: the alcohol makes the wine feel excessively hot most of the time and the overall taste is lacking freshness and energy quite a bit - the wine doesn't carry itself that well, but instead comes across as clumsy, cumbersome and weighty. This is a good attempt at making a bigger Cabernet Franc, but a bit less ripeness (i.e. higher acidity and lower alcohol) could go a long way. Not a particularly bad wine and I guess that people who enjoy bigger and heavier new world wines will like this much more than I do. Priced somewhat according to its quality at 17,89€.

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