Nice musty cherry and raspberry fruit and fully integrated wood on the nose. These flavors follow through onto the palate, but structurally this wine is just past its peak. The 6% sauv blanc gives it a brightness of flavor and lightness of body that are interesting but that don’t necessarily fit with its mature Merlot/Cab profile. Don’t wait to drink this if you have it.
Yup…I liked this wine a lot but it tasted 10 years older than it is.
My assessment of this wine is very different: Having made a couple of hundred wines from the Renaissance terroir over a few decades, I have not seen one of them disintegrate (or pass its peak) at 9 years of age. All of these reds begin thinking about coming to their own at 8-12 years, and most often at 15-20+ years… (Look up discussions about the 1996 Clos Saron “Once Upon a Time” Cabernet Sauvignon for an example of what I mean.)
Specifically for this one, it is very high in acidity and very very tight. Its current austerity should not be confused with ‘drying out’, rather the fruit is hidden packed in its very concentrated core and will only start coming to the surface in 4-8 more years.
I just came back from a trip to the East Coast and Chicago, where I poured this wine to literally hundreds of people over 9 days in tastings, seminars, wine dinners, and visits to retailers/restaurants. Based on both my own tasting experience and the feedback (and sales results…) from others, I am confident in my assessment.
Many thanks for your feedback!
Gideon, thank you very much for the insight.
Would you recommend waiting on the 2008 Black Pearl as well? That would be the next young-ish Clos Saron bottle I would consider opening next. If yes, I will be forced to keep going through my few remaining bottles of late 90s Renaissance wines. Which have been an eye opening mind bending experience to drink through.
Great input, Gideon. I bought some bottles of this, and I’ll be patient to let them develop.
Well luckily I have another bottle coming! Will put it away for a while and see what happens.
In this case it depends more on your palate and wine habits: the wine is soft, rich, and very appealing as it is. However, if you leave it to age longer, it would dramatically increase in depth of flavor, complexity, and harmony. For my own taste/habits, I would start giving it trial runs in about five to eight years. But I am used to drinking mature wines and very much prefer wines at their optimal openness phase. In the case of the Spring Frost, which is significantly tighter, it would seem mandatory to me… that wine at this stage is like a laser beam and I’m not sure about the pleasure of consuming laser beams…
To draw a parallel from another, somewhat similar wine, if any of you can find a bottle of 1999 Renaissance Merlot (either the Estate or Première Cuvée) you’d see what a mature Renaissance Merlot tastes like. And the Spring Frost has a good deal of Petit Verdot and Cabernet Sauvignon in it, which would only cause is to lock up for many more years than those pure, or nearly pure, Merlots.
I just brought my last magnum of 1995 Once upon a Time Riesling to a dinner along with a JJPrum 2001 goldkap/LGK Auslese Wehlener Sonnenuhr. They were of equivalent quality and the dry chalky quite fresh 1995 was a wonderful yin to the Prum’s yang.
Clos Saron reds often have savory flavors when young that can be mistaken for a sign of full maturity, I’ve noticed this. This is terroir driven and fades into a note of complexity as the closed up red fruits emerge after five or more years. Some vintages of J Thomas, eg, are similar. Usually such savoriness in a wine emerges only after full maturity or beyond. With Clos Saron it’s the vineyards and it’s great. I’ve tracked far too many young and old Clos Saron/ OUAT/ Renaissance bottles not to be certain of my view. I age all of them for several years and buy the oldest ones I can find.