Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Finca El Retiro 2004 Syrah (Argentina)

I have to admit that some things in life come as a complete surprise - like finding an older vintage of a wine in your wine cellar that you had no idea you had.  That came to me the day after I had the wine mentioned in this title of this post:  Finca el Retiro 2004 Syrah - in the next few days I will be posting my notes from a bottle of 2001 I seem to have lolly-gagging in my cellar.  But let's first move on to this bottle.  There are time when I am a totally inappropriate wine drinker - that does not mean I get sloppy drunk and lounge about the house without any pants on (heck I do that second thing on a day-to-day basis) ... by inappropriate I mean I drink things that are not suppose to go together.  Take tonight's dinner: Pesto crusted Cod, and pair with it a Syrah from Argentina - I find these experiments fascinating and fly in the face of the white-with-fish, red-with-meat crowd.  Now would I recommend this pairing, not really, but I can tell you this the dinner was good and so was the wine and if that's the case you don't necessarily have to put them in your mouth together if they don't compliment one another - this one was hit and miss as far as a pairing; but this 8-year-old Syrah was very interesting and inviting right from the get-go.  Nose and palate seemed to be in unison most of the way through.  Aromas of mocha, spice, coffee with a touch of wood and/or cedar (depending on the sip) coming through.  Where the palate seem to diverge was with the fruit - while there was nothing on the nose the palate showed signs of blueberry, black cherry and dark raspberry nuances before being enveloped by the aromas that turned into flavours.  A very tasty bottle - can't wait to see how the 2001 has stacked up.


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