In a Twitter discussion with Colaneri I mentioned that I would be drinking a bottle of their wine tonight ... it's too early to call this a Taste it Again review - seeing as I only reviewed this wine a little over a year ago - but I can give you my impressions of the wine a year later ... heck, it's still very good (I gave it 4.5 stars back in November 2011). The nose still has a strong aromas of smoked meat, adds dried and smoked cherries to the mix with hints of blackberry. The palate comes off as sour black cherry and pomegranate to start, then comes the Montreal smoked meat with extra white pepper rub, then there's also a nice spiced-smoked-cherry on the finish. The wine is holding up nicely and has managed to smooth out a bit, but still enticingly delicious.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Masi 2004 Campofiorin (Italy)
My love affair with Masi continues as I pull out a bottle of 2004 Campofiorin to give it a go. Not one of the 5-star vintages that Masi touts on their label (under the year), but definitely it was a good one. For those that don't know Campofiorin is the Ripasso wine from Masi and is consistently a good wine and great value - especially if you consider I was holding this one for 6-7 years and it is 8 years old. The layers and complexity of this wine were amazing as each sip delivered something new ot the tongue - while the nose only gave out little bits and pieces: Aromas of black cherry, kirsch and creme de cacao were all that were present through the hour and a half I drank the wine - but the palate was anything buy coy. Plum, mocha, celery seed, cedar, fruit leather, cigar box and a slight bite from the tannins all made an appearance at one time or another ... my final few sips proved to be smooth with black cherry and cigar box notes - and those are the flavours I took away.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Two South American Bottles 2003 & 2010 (Argentina / Chile)
Dined on prime rib Saturday night, and I was in charge of the wine ... hate to say it, it was never actually said that I was in charge but I put myself in that position. I pulled out two very different bottles one from Chile the other from Argentina ... one brand new (2010) the other nine years old (2003). Started with the older wine: Clos de los Siete 2003 from Argentina, a wine that proudly states on the front label Michel Rolland's name.Turns out about 6 months ago I opened a bottle of the 2006 version of this wine and thought out loud in that post about what the 2003 would taste like. As it turns out the 2003 was not as exciting as the 2006 but was still a decent wine. Earthy nose was the mainstay of aromas, while the palate was dried of fruit with earthiness mixed in - the wine had definitely crested the hill and was on its way down the other side; but I still had a glass and a half to see how it progressed over the course of an hour or so - it never got better, but it didn't get worse either, so that was a plus in its favour. The second bottle was the one I popped the cork on for dinner: Valdivieso 2010 Single Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (Santa Cruz) - now this was typically Chilean, but typical in a good way: the wine was laced with mint chocolate, dark berries and a luscious mouthfeel. Two wines with very different stories to tell and both told them in their own way, and I was glad to be there to listen (so to speak).
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Bodegas Castano 2005 Hecula (Spain)
Last week I posted a piece on the Ottawa Life blog about the new 2009 Hecula that's in the LCBO now ... I mentioned that it was a great buy for what you get ... then I looked into my own cellar and noticed I have a bottle dating back to 2003, but that's not the one I decided to open on this night (give me a week or two and curiosity will get the better of me) instead it was the 2005 Hecula that caught my attention first (probably because I have a back up bottle). At first sniff and sip I found the wine a little tight (still?) or maybe it had just become all wooden in character: there were signs of dark berry (blackberry) and hints of cedar and roasted coffee beans ... that cedar seemed to intensify in the first half hour until it was all you could smell ... but the palate didn't show these signs, instead in had licorice, spice and cassis flowing freely on the tongue. Now here's where things turned wonky. After about half an hour in things started to turn on their head: the nose was much better adding sweet black licorice, cinnamon and cardamom all mixing well with the blackberry; the cedar started to dissipate and the coffee notes became pleasant hints ... but now the cedar seemed to be moving to the palate, masking the original flavours. Fast forward another half hour and voila this wine finally found its way, the nose had lost much of the cedar (it was now just a whiff in the background, and the palate had also shucked it's wooden flavours turning them to black tea and graphite, plus the licorice, spice and cassis were back in full force ... it was also smooth as silk as it glided over the tongue. Advice here would be to open and decant, or if you have the patience: open, pour a bit out to give it some air and let it breathe an hour or so - this is one delicious wine after that.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Bellevue Estate 2002 Tumara Titan (South Africa)
So I read a bit about this wine through folks who had reviewed it on CellarTracker - a service I subscribe to for keeping track of my wine collection. Only one person (out of four) enjoyed the wine, and that was back in 2009, the rest dissed the wine as having a "manure/barnyard factor" (2010), or "herbaceous - tar" (2005); those who drank it in 2009 were split: one liked it very much that other guy said his wife liked it better than he did. So I opened this bottle with some trepidation, but keeping in mind it was South African wine - a country known for quite a bit of stink in their reds especially, in the past I have likened it to road tar ... but I have also found that given a healthy amount of time that nuance can dissipate and become more of a asset instead of a detriment. The first problem I had was not in the nose or taste, it was the cork, which decided it did not want to budge - I ended up getting half the cork out and drilling a hole down the middle to pour the wine out - I then had to get the bottle pouring and then put my glass under it (like a constantly running fountain) to avoid getting to many cork pieces in my glass. As for the wine itself: the nose was earth based with lots of forest floor and mushroom notes ... there was a hint of smoky-tar but nothing too off-putting as it would have been when it was young. The palate had a definite aged flavour, mostly teriary notes, definitely no fresh fruit - I don't think I found any dried fruit either. Earthy and coffee flavours dominated, but it was fairly smooth, still showed good acidity with just enough tannin grip to keep it interesting. Not sure I agree with three of my CellarTracker co-horts, but then again I knew what I was getting into, if you've never experience that "South Africa Stink" in a bottle of their wine it can be quite off-putting. By the way, the wine was a blend of 66% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, 10% Malbec and 5% Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc - so a true Bordeaux blend using all five grapes.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Rosemount 2006 Show Reserve GSM (Australia)
I had a lot of luck with a 2006 wine last time - so once again I'm going back to the well of 2006 and trying another ... this time I'm going all the way around the world to grab something out of the cellar from Australia - a Rosemount Show Reserve GSM (Grenache / Shiraz / Mourvedre) ... this is a pretty standard blend from Australia, because they can get all three grapes to ripen in their kind of heat. While the blend is standard this wine was far from your average every day sip. What I really liked about this wine, in its present state, is the menthol that rises up from the glass - some could mistake it for alcohol heat, but it is most definitely a menthol note that seems to envelop itself around the other aromas of cassis, blackberry and mocha. Sip after sip it revealed more and more flavours, most dark fruited, with spicy character, some licorice (a cross between both red and black) along with some of that menthol on the finish. This wine is ageing very well and hopefully will continue to do so over the next 5 years or so.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Bodegas Lan 2006 Crianza (Spain)
This is a wine traditionally made with Tempranillo and is aged 12 months in oak. It comes from the Rioja region of Spain (the most famous of Spain's regions) and from a prestigious producer of the area - LAN. Now that the preliminaries are out of the way its time to get down to those brass tacks people talk about ... the wine itself. As mentioned in a previous post, I'm doing my typical winter wander through my cellar and picking out old bottles to taste. This wine is only 6 years old - so not the oldest I'll subject my taste-buds to, but it might turn out to be one of the best. This was an absolutely stellar wine that kept getting better and better the more it sat open in the glass. The nose was earthy (at first - this dissipated with an hour in the glass) along with plum, cedar and some strawberry aromas, which seem to struggle to get through, but did eventually make it. That earthy note that was on the nose was no where to be seen on the palate: plum, blackberry, sour cherry, and smoky ... but wait, near the finish it (the earthiness) did pop in to play with some cassis that lingers on. At about the hour-and-a-half mark it hit its stride and showed black cherry and cocoa from mid-palate to finish (and into the long linger). Simply lovely.
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