I love it when someone posts about a wine I can grab and chime in on!
Last night, we decided to open this wine and try to help break the tie…
Opened at 6:19 pm and tasted to about 11 pm.
Good acidity, ‘upper medium,’ and the guy in the movie would say. Tart red fruit, piquant. I liked what was said about strawberry tops, we were debated any hint of cherry and ended up with a bit of raspberry. very very slight tobacco sensation on the nose that wandered off as the wine was open longer. We liked the fruit profile because it was not overtly fruit forward and not overly ‘ripe.’
I like paying attention to the finish on wines, this one finished top front of my palate and had a short back of palate finish. I think this fits its acidity.
We tasted this with Berserker Day Flannery burgers and the wine was enhanced with a touch of burger fattiness. It was a synergistic match. I would call this wine very ‘food responsive.’
As it had time to catch its breath, the wine became more and more vibrant, my wife was particularly taken by this evolution. She said “It opened fabulously! Surprisingly so!”
All in all, a thumbs up from me, my perfect wife, Nanny (her mom), and my elder son.
Then, my niece who lives with us, wandered in, and also a friend of mine who is staying with us and we decided the time was right to hit a second bottle.
We went back a few years from the first wine to get a general idea of the arc of aging these babies are on.
The 2002 Central Coast was a treat. It started off equally bright to the 2010, I would have guessed it to be younger than it is. It had a more mid-palate finish, and felt like it had a true medium acid presentation.
It had a longer finish than the 2010.
It had more straight up fruit identifiers. Just like Rich’s great description of strawberry tops in his note, we agreed to that with this wine. Quince and rhubarb also got mentions from the group.
There was some very faint ‘underground stone’ and cacao (but not cola) bit on the nose, which was very pleasant to catch within the fruit notes.
This wine happened after dinner, with about a 2 hour tasting span. It stood well on its own. (It went well with watching Queen Latifah [who I have a crush on] playing The Equalizer on her new show. Adam Goldberg is fun to watch, too. The plots are more broad than a Johnny Quest episode, but she is so cool it doesn’t matter.)
Thanks, Rich, for inspiring us across the digital expanse!