Decant Stop Tasting Wine Blog

Is this Borolo?  Sure tastes like it.  This is a massive and serious wine!  We had it with our Valentine’s dinner.  Before the pour i wiffed the cork and got really excited… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves!

Read more

This is a big, big wine!  It is like pouring yourself a glass of ink!  Forget about seeing through it, but on the edges there’s some beautiful dark violet color.  The aroma, to me, reaks too much of alcohol… but beyond that there’s dark fruit, cherry, and rose.

Read more

Beautiful garnet color made me first think that this was going to be a great wine.  Then the super balanced and beautiful aroma of smoked oak, dark fruit, cark chocolate, cigar box, strawberry, and vanilla had me convinced.  Unfortunately the flavors didn’t follow suit.  We found it a bit on the light and simple side.  It tasted of smoke, plum, rose petals, strawberry, and a little cinnamon.  Nice, but not $50 nice.  Mouth-feel was lightly acidic and mild on the palate with mild, ripe tannins.  The finish, which wasn’t very strong or long at all, was cedar, cherry, light tannins, and tiny bit of black pepper.  Overall a pretty nice wine… certainly pretty to look at and smell.  But at 50 bucks, I’m not going to recommend it.

Rating:  90

Price:  $50

Read more

Hello all! Just wanted to drop in and add my very first note to all you wonderful people. I’m very excited about this blog, and would like to think those who drew me to it.

My first post is a very special wine I came across while running tastings at my alma mater USC. After a successful tasting I was given a beautiful bottle of this vintage from Joseph Drouin of the Bordeaux region in France, but this particular wine was born instead on US soil.

The coldish, damp climate and acidic soils in Oregon’s Willamette Valley gives very similar characteristics to its grapes that those in Bordeaux do. The plump, overtly boring Pinot grape gives way to the slightly shriveled, sweetened grape that makes the Pinot Noir special.

You’ll notice deep, mushy blackberry and coffee on the nose right away, but a little decanting does wonders for this relatively young wine, allowing the deep cassis and faint notes of ripe orange to open up towards a mellow finish of velvety tannins.

A word of advice, this wine is special (read: expensive…as all good Pinot Noir is) so save it for a special occasion or a special red drinker of yours. My wife and I shared ours over her birthday meal.

Buy now and drink it, but if you cellar it it will get even better.

Hooray! One down, many more bottles to go!

Rating: 91

Price: $50 (K&L Wines)

Read more