This big red has a deep, dark color — almost black — and a powerful nose of black fruit, cassis, a touch of Christmas spice (cinnamon, nutmeg), and lots of vanilla and toast. You can tell it spent a lot of time in new oak; wines from its region typically do, but this example might have got an extra dose. In the mouth, you get good fresh acids considering the wine’s ponderous body. Lots of delicious blackberry and some blueberry liqueur flavors, some leather and asphalt on the edges. Loads of glycerine and ripe tannins betray the fact that it’s from a warm vintage.
But the wine’s long, mouthstaining finish shows what is (according to this drinker’s taste) its only flaw: a distinctly woody aftertaste says, “too much oak!” This showy beverage might stand out in a blind tasting, but, as a meal itself in a glass, it couldn’t play ball with my pepperoni pizza.
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The flavor and aroma profiles (cassis, dark fruits) match up perfectly with a cabernet sauvignon’s, so if you guessed this varietal you’re moving in the right direction. Cab can also stand up to the amount of oak clearly used during this wine’s vinification. But cabernet from where? We know the region relies on oak barrels traditionally, but that could be Napa or Bordeaux, both famous homes to King Cab. We can eliminate Napa and the rest of the new world, though, because we’re getting secondary flavors like leather and asphalt, which usually come up in old world wines. So let’s guess it’s a wine from the left bank/northern Medoc area of the Bordeaux region, which produces muscular reds from its widely-planted cabernet sauvignon plantings. And let’s guess 2003 for the vintage, since that year France survived an extended heatwave that led to very ripe flavors in its wines. Bordeaux fanatics will further propose that this wine came from Chateau Haut-Marbuzet, which has a controversial reputation for the amount of new oak barrels it uses in its winemaking, and they’d be right. The bottle set Wine Girl back $37.99.
