We had some WineBerserkers friends over for dinner last night & tried:
- CowanCllrs ISA LakeCnty (SauvBlanc; skin-frmtd; www.CowanCellars.com; 10 yrs sur lie in btl) 2010: Dark burnished bronze color & somewhat murky; very fragrant orangey/almost orange muscat quite honeyed/honeycomb graham cracker/honey graham light earthy/herbal/bit SB very complex beautiful nose; lightly tart quite rich/lush very strong honeyed/honeycomb/light orangey strong honey graham/graham cracker/bit nilla wafer very complex beautiful flavor w/ no evident tannins; very long/lingering quite rich/lush/textured/mouthfilling some orangey strong honey graham/graham cracker/nilla wafer very cvomplex finish w/ no tannins; a beautiful fully-mature ViniMacerati/skin-contact white; reminds a lot of a fully-mature Gravner w/o the oxidation; the sur lies probably gives it a richness & texture that most VM don’t achieve; pretty incredible stuff. $nc (FJ)
A wee BloodyPulpit:
- This wine is about as Unicorn a wine as you can get. After bottling his '10 in 2011, he discovered a some of his '10 ISA wine in carboy/cask that he’d used for topping wine. So he hand bttld it, several cases worth, no fining or filtering or racking, and stuck it in the closet & forgot about it. Ten yrs later, he opened a btl and thought it even better than his regular bttlg. So the wine was aged, sur lie, for a decade. Since I’d just given his '11 ISA a glowing review, he felt I should also try this Unicorn wine, so sent me two btls of it.
This is, to me, the best fully-mature VM from Calif (or anyplace) I can recall. Amazing stuff.
Tom