2005 Levy & McClellan Red

Community Tasting Notes (46) Avg Score: 94.7 points

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View Mark1npt's profile
  • Report Issue

  4/26/2024 - Mark1npt Likes this wine: 96 Points

  Served blind. Brought by HMC to our event this night. 3 hour decant.
  
  Classic Napa Cab nose. Showing lots of age in the glass, a light to medium garnet. Looks like it could be an '01 or '03 so no way of knowing how this one was stored all these years as HMC got it at auction a few months ago.
  
  Cedar and red currant on the nose. Palate is fully resolved. This one is drinking older than other bottles I have had in the past year. Smooth, regal and red fruited. It's beautiful, but weakens a bit later in the evening with too much airtime. Just goes to show you how storing bottles can make a big difference in how they drink down the road.....

  2 people found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comments (2)

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View Geaux Tigers's profile
  • Report Issue

  2/7/2024 - Geaux Tigers Likes this wine: 96 Points

  Double decanted and started drinking at 2 hr, but hit its stride at a little over 3 hr.
  
  Nose of dark dried berries, cool blue mint, touch of herbal earthiness, potting soil, cedar, and spiced tea bag.
  
  On the palate, a distracting balsamic note started it off that blew away by hour three, leaving crushed fresh red and blackberries, cola, and black tea notes.

  1 person found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comment

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View HowellMountainCru's profile
  • Report Issue

  1/8/2024 - HowellMountainCru Likes this wine: 97 Points

  Brought to Prime Rib Dinner at our house by Mark1NPT.
  
  Fantastic nose, perfectly integrated and mature napa Red Blend. This is why people love aged Napa. It had wonderful glide, and a perfect combination of perfume and power. This is like the sexiest female weightlifter; you could ever imagine.
  
  Thanks for opening Mark 97 HMC

  2 people found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comments (1)

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View Mark1npt's profile
  • Report Issue

  1/7/2024 - Mark1npt Likes this wine: 98 Points

  Double decanted over 2+ hours then back into the bottle for dinner at HMCs. Still needed a little more time there, too. I'd say maybe decant this fully for 3-4 hours right now.
  
  Medium garnet in the glass, indicating its age somewhat. Nose of rich fruit, perfumed florals and cassis. Palate is unique in its liqueur laden dark red/black fruit. Creamy, silky with excellent balancing acidity. A hint of unresolved tannins early on but these left over time.
  
  This wine is the only one out of thousands of bottles (and plenty of pro scored 100 point wines) that I have ever given 100 pts to and that was around 4 months ago. This bottle obtained only recently and I have no idea of its handling over the past 16 years. There seems to be a bit of controversy over the metal cap glued to the cork and the breaking of corks in two on removal. The cap was removed easily by popping it off the cork with a small eyeglass screwdriver. I attempted to remove the cork with an Ah-so but it snapped in half in the process. On further inspection I found the reason why. The corks are in fine shape but the hot glue they use to attach the metal cap to the top of the cork leaks down the sides of the cork, and literally glues the lower half of the cork to the inside of the neck of the bottle. Once you dig all the cork out, you find the residue of cork and glue stuck to the sides of the neck and it's impossible to remove it all so I used a finer in the bottle to pour into the decanter which bypasses the glue residue in the neck. Just food for thought........

  3 people found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comments (4)

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View jclarkwmj's profile
  • Report Issue

  11/2/2023 - jclarkwmj Does not like this wine: 72 Points

  Drank w/ KH for 40th.
  
  Bottle design is horrible. Difficult to remove stupid coin on top without shards of glass coming off or bending a cork screw/foil cutter. Definitely needed an ah-so which didn’t occur to me at the time. My fault.
  
  Cork was dried out and disintegrated I’m guessing because of inferior quality cork as well as no foil from dumb bottle design to help retain moisture. There’s a reason the Europeans have used foil for generations. Probably tried to save more money on bottle design. It seems most of the money went into the girth and obnoxious size/weight of the bottle which without foil continued to leak on every pour. In fact, it just seemed to leak wine everywhere throughout this comical experience .
  
  Had to push the cork in so every glass had bits of cork floating in it. What a joke! Didn’t decant because of the amount of effort I already invested in trying to get the cork out. Not to mention I had stored this upon release which alone required years of patience.
  
  Wine was quite good, but I could barely enjoy it because of the amount of blood and sweat I invested in removing the cork.
  
  I’ll stick to my previous note. This wine is nowhere near a value at $500 plus years of storage. Bob and Martha need to get a grip with this over the top bottle design shwap. Just stick to the basics 😁

  2 people found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comments (12)

View all 46 Community Tasting Notes

Professional reviews have copyrights and you can view them here for your personal use only as private content. To view pro reviews you must either subscribe to a pre-integrated publication or manually enter reviews below. Learn more.