Decant Stop Tasting Wine Blog

This is the 2nd vintage of this wine we’ve had, the first being the 2003.  Again, my expectations were high, but this time impressed me even more.  This is for sure the same wine and most of what was found in it last year, are present this time around, but with a bit more fruit and acidity.  It isn’t at all hot, and still has little tannin.  After 18 months in the barrel, you can definitely taste it, a little smokey vanilla.  The black pepper was more subtle this time and licorice was non-existant sadly.  The finish is quite nice and long.  Most people will see this as a better wine, including myself.  Highly enjoyable!  Remember to decant!

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I like simple labels, and that’s one thing that appeals to me about this wine.  It looks simple, but you get the feeling all the passion went into the wine.  Upon decanting this bottle, that was also apparent.  The nose was quite interesting, with ripe fruit (mostly red), floral, and spice… and sweet somehow, not like candy so much as maybe a confection.  On the pallet it is floral, smooth red and blue fruits, low-medium acidity, and bit of tannin at the end.  There’s mostly the same on the finish, but adds a bit of black pepper and a vegetal component.  The after-taste is quite long, and I could swear that in there somewhere there’s watermelon.

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Upon first opening the bottle this wine looked nice – deep ruby color with hints of orange/brown, which I associate mostly with Barolo.  I didn’t know yet, but this producer also makes Barolo and is apparently good at it.  You may recognize the name too, as we recently had the 1998 vintage of the same wine.  We loved that wine.  This one is good, but not as good.

Initialy on the nose and in the mouth this wine was a bit hot.  Still, there was good fruit and structure already, so we waited for it to decant a while.  This certainly paid off, as the heat subsided to some degree, making the wine more pleasant.  At that point it was in essance a richer, bolder version of the 98, but still… not as enjoyable.  The veggies, the mint, the tangerine… there, but just slightly, and the fruit isn’t as pure.  There’s more tannin and acidity, so it will take on more robust foods.  It is good, but I guess I’m just a little disappointed because based on the 98, and what this wine adds feels like potential for greatness, but in practice takes away from it.  It is the same wine, with increased levels of fruit, acidity, and tannin.  You can still taste the rest, but it is almost hidden by the power of those increased factors.  It is a good wine, and I do recommend it, especially if you’re having it with a meal.

Rating:  90

Price:  $6-17
We bought this wine during the same sale.. paid $6, but it retails for $17+

OK, you’ve probably noticed we’re in rut with Italian wines.  Well, it isn’t so much that we’re trying to do that, but K&L recently had a clearance of Italian wines to make room for a new shipment… so we bought several.  That said, you might make a note that I do tend to enjoy Italian wines quite a bit.  I like that they haven’t sold out [as much] to the American driven fruit bomb style.  Anyway, on with the review.

We didn’t like this wine too much.  It was fruitier than the last 2 we reviewed, but lacked the depth we desire – which the other two had more of.  C’est la vie… we paid 5 bucks for it and can’t expect much.  It does, however, retail for $13, so should, in our opinion, taste better.  That’s just a matter of taste preference, however, and we do realize that many people here in the U.S. will like this wine just fine, maybe even quite a bit.  It is easy to drink and has no harshness anywhere.

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We had this with pizza and it went well.  Later, after the taste of the pizza was gone, the wine was basically pleasent but unmemorable.  I would call this typical run of the mill chianti.  We bought it on sale resently for $10, but retailed for $20 upon release.  I’m very glad I didn’t pay full price.  Not bad, really, but you can do better for the money.

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I rather liked this one, but Rika had a difference of opinion.  To me it tasted very similar in profile to the Layer Cake, only to a lesser degree.  It was actually your typical old world Italian wine… big on structure with plenty of vegetation, decent tannin, and good acidity.  The very definition of food friendly wine.  Rika felt is was overly vegetative and not enough fruitiness.  The more I drank it, the more I agreed.  Still, it is a pretty good wine, and for 10 bucks (retail $15) I felt like it was good wine for the money.  On the other hand, the Durigutti Bonarda is less money and better wine… and a similar style.

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We were very lucky to get this wine, and the luck runs deep with this purchase.  As you already know, if you’ve read this blog at all, we’re relatively new to “the serious” wine scene.  As such, we don’t have a cellar with 10+ year old wines to pull from, from time to time.  That day will come eventually, but for now, we’re stuck trying to find those wines for a price we can afford… because we tend to like them quite a bit.  Of course with age comes risk – risk of spoilage.  We don’t know how this wine was stored all these years.  Lucky for us, apparently it was stored well.

I got this wine during K&L’s Italian wine clearance sale.  The original price was $17 and was on sale for 4 BUCKS!  I figured, for 4 bucks my expectations would be low and it wouldn’t matter much if it was spoiled or just not that great.  But we totally hit paydirt with this one.

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We sort of got stuck in beer and re-buy mode for a while due to the heat.  I know that isn’t really what you want to hear from a wine blogger, but… we’re only human after all.  That said, we promise to try to work though that period next year.

That’s all in the past [for now] anyway, as the cooler weather is here and we’re back in full swing with our pallets raring to experience some new and interesting wine.  The next review is coming tonight, and with a decade old Dolcetto D’Alba to boot!  We’re going to do it up right with multiple photos and details, details, details!  Join us and enjoy the experience along with us!

Enobytes.com recently compiled a list of “Google’s Top 100 Wine Blogs” and our humble blog made it on the list at #77!  We’re pretty excited about this, since we’ve never done anything to increase our ranking with Google (or anywhere)… we just review the wines we drink.  I guess our database IS getting pretty big, which probably has something to do with it.  Plus, we drink wines that are fairly “available”, and thus get surched fairly often.  This is evident by the over 4,000 visitors we had in October.  Now, if we could just get people to COMMENT!