1994 Beringer Vineyards Alluvium- USA, California, Sonoma County, Knights Valley (12/15/2009)
Classic Bordeaux blend, showing AMAZINGLY well right now! Deep dark flavors of roasted coffee, chocolate, toasted barrel oak spice…to go along perfectly with smooth and soft dark wild berries, plums, currant fruit. This wine has a great feel to it…huge dark fruit, yet plush and velvety smooth. Complexities of old leather, pencil lead, violets, cedar box spice gush out as well…and I’ve only had this open for a few minutes! Really really Bordeaux-like…would fool everyone blind. Great producer, great year, GREAT wine! (94 pts.)
Thanks, Brian. I drank my last bottle about 18 months ago and sort of wish I had held it even a bit longer, as this is at least the second rather positive note I’ve read on this wine in the past 2-3 months.
FWIW, my most recent note:
1994 Beringer Vineyards Alluvium Knights Valley. This wine presents a nose that feels cool and crunchy, with smoke, minerals, frozen berries, green leaves and other cool forest greens. It is chocolaty and a bit sweet on the entry, turning more toward earthy, herbal and smoky notes through the middle. It is hanging in there just fine, in my opinion, with its medium body, and tannins that are still showing some intensity. The chocolate roars back strongly on the finish, which has some decent length. There was a lot of this wine left at the end of the night, so I took home the leftovers and drank them 2 nights later. At that point, the nose really morphed to take on big notes of peppermint dust, balsam wood and tomato leaf. The flavor profile became less herbal and much more cool blueberry-focused, with the tannins getting a bit grittier, though. The finish continued to be chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. A nice showing. 91 pts.
MAN…the good ol days of Cali Cab(blends)! 13.3 alc and smooooth as a babies bottom…another super bottle last night, drinking extremely well, might have bested the '04 La Mission HB we had as well!
We had a bottle of the 2007 Alluvium last night, popped and poured at Spinster Sisters in Santa Rosa (thanks Matt R for that suggestion!). There’s no Vinous Piety Points for drinking a large production, Costco available, popularly styled wine – but this example was very nice. Smooth, no tannins, plush, maybe a little low acid. To me, its still showing a fair amount of oak/vanilla, but perhaps this is as much as its going to integrate. For a wine that is meant to feel like a St Emilion, it comes across like a good example - maybe 1998 or 2005 – but without as much earth, and forest. Overall a very enjoyable 2007, and a B+ in my book, although I think the premium they ask for this over the base KV CS blend is too much. Some of that may be the marketing rules around using the word Meritage though, which I thought had to be the highest priced wine in the lineup? There is no need to rush on drinking these.
Awesome. I remember that wine but it is long gone from my cellar. I do love it when stumble over some wine I forgot I had, that was a bargain, and they have aged beautifully.
I have bought and tasted the 1994 Alluvium intermittently since fifteen years ago, and hence tasted it during this month. Within the past two years or so, this once-balanced and elegant wine has definitely begun to degrade, showing much less dark fruit, ripe tannin, spice, and integrated glycerin than it once did, unfortunately thinning down toward a late middle-age comb-over of overt vanilla, raw oak, watery mouthfeel, and adverse funk. After the first glass, any initial fruit notes dissipated into bland sweetness. Despite the great 1994 vintage overall, its petit verdot, cabernet franc, and malbec components have somehow reared some ugly herbaceous heads.
The remainder of a bottle still in my refrigerator is heading for a Sunday sauce demise.