2005 Darioush Cabernet Franc- USA, California, Napa Valley (11/13/2011)
I thought this was great. I opened and decanted for 2 hours before taking to the restaurant. We drank it last at dinner so it had been opened for about 4 hours before we drank it. This was one of the most beautiful noses I have smelled in a while. It was dark fruit, cocoa, saddle leather, and pencil lead. The taste was no different, incredibly multi-dimensional. I tasted a small sip right out of the bottle and it really evolved over the course of the night. It was so rich and covered the mouth with each sip. I thought this was a really wonderful wine and I wish I had more bottles of this. (94 pts.)
2006 Sequoia Grove Cabernet Sauvignon Stagecoach Vineyard- USA, California, Napa Valley (11/13/2011)
This was a very good example of a Cali cab. I opened about an hour before dinner and then decanted for about 20 minutes before returning to the bottle and taking to Suze. It was really nice and stylistically like many other wines I have had from SG. Blue fruits, some vanilla, and some earthiness were the prominent flavors. It was good but overshadowed by the other red of the evening. (90 pts.)
My sister in law and I had a bottle of the 2016 Darioush ‘cabernet franc’ [Napa] this afternoon while trying to keep the pool/pets/kids safe. It’s a big, fat, flamboyant wine despite coming from mountainside vineyards. Lots of oak and alcohol. Really the wrong glug for poolside! Heavy bottle, deep punt, and inky dark. It probably would have better in a couple of years. Afterwards we had a shitty overoaked, underfruited St Emilion that showed the downside of the general ‘squish the grapes harder’ style of wine making. It needs some time to calm down - today isn’t really the right time to drink this. Both this and the St Em were stupidly overpriced relative to the enjoyment one gets.
Other family members wisely stuck to the pitcher of Bloody Marys or Sangria rather than venturing into Red Wine in Plastic Goblets Danger Land.
