I paid about $60 for this one a couple of years ago. I was cooking up a nice steak, home-made mashed potatoes and green beans and was looking for something to drink with the meal. I saw the “S” and thought to myself that it was one of the $23 current vintages so I pulled it out. I saw what it was and almost put it back. Then I said “What the heck. It is time.”

Boy did I get that right, as I don’t think this one could sit any longer. When I pulled the cork, it broke into three major chunks. I figured that the wine was probably toast, but the cork pieces all felt soft and the wine stain did not venture up the side of the cork more than about a quarter-inch.

The color is intense dark red with nice legs and the aromas are of toasted oak, ripe dark fruit – mostly dark cherry and a bit of dark chocolate.

It is very smooth with quite a bit of pepper (which went nice with the freshly ground pepper on my grilled steak…). There is a bit of cedar in amongst the dark fruit but the wine changes as it sits in the glass. At first the cedar flavor is a bit too intense, but after a few minutes, that burns off and the dark fruit takes over, as it should.

The finish builds with a bit of heat but then tapers off quite nicely with a touch of mocha at the end.

I’m glad that I opened this one. I would have been sad if I would have waited any longer.

This is an awesome blend of Zinfandel, Syrah and Mourvedre.

I  must say upfront that I think that I opened it much too early. This is a huge wine with a lot of alcohol, but I think it sit another year or two. It is very fruity, but has a great mouth-feel, the taste curve is well-balanced and it matched up with my Trader Joe’s Goat Cheese pizza quite nicely.

Color is dark purple and the wine has nice legs.

Aromas include blackberry, leather, a touch of blueberry, some cedar, and a touch of vanilla. I would like to say it smells like a late harvest Zinfandel, but that doesn’t quite explain the rich and ripe aroma.

In the mouth, it has a great balance.  Flavors include blackberry, blueberry, and a horse saddle. (Ok, there’s a bit of leather in there.)

The finish is hot with tons of dark fruit and perhaps a touch of eucalyptus on the very end.

I like it a lot!

I figured that I probably waited too long to open this one, but I think I caught it right at the peak. It is much more intense than I remember.

The color is intensely deep, dark purple in color. The aromas include very ripe blackberry and blueberry, with a just a touch of vanilla. The flavors include a lot of very ripe dark fruit.  And the finish is very hot. There is a lot of alcohol in this one.

This one scores 20 out of 20 points for me!

This wine has a lot – a lot of dark purple color, a lot of dark fruit aromas and flavors and a lot of pepper on the finish. There is also a little chocolate and vanilla which rounds it out nicely.

I have to say that this is one of my favorite wines that I’ve tasted this year!

http://www.hermanstorywines.com/

This is the best Coteaux du Languedoc wine that I’ve ever tasted – period!

I’m not totally over my cold, but I can smell well enough to drink wine for the first time in over a week!

If I had this one blind, I would never guess that it was an old world wine.

It has a bright appearance with a black-cherry color with nice legs.

The aroma almost says “Paso Robles.” (The color is not dark enough though.) I say “almost” as I think I smell some roses or other flowers…I don’t smell any wood what-so-ever. (Which is why I wouldn’t think it is a French wine.)

Flavors are well-blended, there is nothing overbearing. There is a little cherry-cola, a touch of licorice, a touch of chocolate, a touch of grilled steak,

A nice long finish it falls off very slowly. Every time you exhale, it comes back to remind you what was just there. Finally a touch of cedar at the back of the mouth… Very nice indeed.

According to their web site, a blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot, 9% Cabernet Franc, and 6% Petite Verdot. This is a beautiful dark ruby red wine. I smell dark cherries, blackberries and chocolate liquor. The flavors are dark cherry, blackberry, dark chocolate, and just a hint of smoke. The finish is huge, it builds a little heat then turns sweet and has a long gentle finish.

I believe this wine will compliment a standing rib roast quite nicely.

Merry Christmas!

This is an awesome $25 wine. Unfortunately, they are charging $40 for the thing. I blame the big wine magazine for rating last year’s vintage so high. Talk about ruining a good thing.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Kent Rosunblum’s wine. I just hate paying more than they are worth.

This wine has an awesome deep purple color.

The aromas are dark cherry, black pepper, mocha and a little vanilla.

Tastes include dark chocolate, dark cherry, blackberry, vanilla, charcoal. Lots of fruit and leather on the finish.

This is a great zinfandel but you are going to pay…go ahead and get one bottle, you’ll not be disappointed…

I think that I bought this one last Christmas time in Wyoming of all places. It was wrapped in a very attractive tissue paper thus assuring that I wouldn’t feel bad paying for it.

Appearance – very dark purple, I figure that there is no way that a wine that looks like this can be anything but outstanding.

Nose – intensely sweet blackberry, a ton of smoke and a little black pepper.

In the mouth – a lot of oak, probably American oak, but not as intense as most wines stored in American oak. This wine probably needs another 5 to 10 years on the shelf, but looking at the cork, I’m not sure it would last that long. The stains on the cork were between 1/3 and 1/2 the length. It might make it another 5 years. I’m not sure that I want to push it that long though.

Anyway, the flavors include tobacco, blackberry, cigar box, dark chocolate and a little black pepper.

The finish is nice and smooth but not as powerful as I had hoped. Don’t get me wrong on that last comment; it does not wimp out on the finish.

I think I paid $40 for this one. If you can get it for $35 or less, it is a bargain. If it costs $45 or more, skip it.

So I haven’t had a GSM in a while. This one is 50% Grenache, 30% Shiraz and 20% Mourvedre.

It is quite interesting as it has the typical earthy/musty finish of a French Rhone blend, but it also has that HUGE fruit-spice bomb of a Barossa Valley Shiraz.

First off, it is very dark purple – a good sign in my book!

The aroma is very hot with dark berries with a subtle hint of cedar.

In the mouth, it is powerful. There is a lot of dark fruit and a nice bit of spice.

The finish keeps building and building long after you swallow it. There is a little leather and a bit of cigar box to wake you up and say “what was that?”

This Shiraz is worthy (for the price)!

I paid about $16 for it. It was recommended by the wine shop clerk, who shares my likes and dislikes in wine. When I come in, he will greet me with news of any new arrivals that I might like. He was correct with this one.

I believe this is the second brand of wine that I’ve tried which used the “Zork” closure. I love corks and I hate screw-tops, but I think that for young wines meant to be consumed in a short time period from bottling – the Zork is great. They have a nice web site to explain it at http://www.zork.com.au/

It is a nice dark purple, the aroma is hot with a bit of licorice and cigar box behind blackberries. It has a nice taste curve, fruity at the beginning, peppery in the middle and finish. There is a lot of blackberry with a bit of tar.

This could just be my new pizza wine.

This is a great wine from Austria in the $18 to $20 price range.

In my tasting notes, I wrote “Get some!”

This is very good. It is huge for a white wine. There is a nice spiciness, which I love in white wine. I’m not sure of the fruit that I tasted, perhaps a touch of pear or honeydew melon. It has a crisp, spicy finish.

My thoughts while tasting this is that it would be great with oysters on the half-shell. I didn’t have any handy, but if I get the opportunity to ever try it I will do so.

This wine has a beautiful dark purple color. It is bright and very young in appearance. The aromas are leather, intense blackberry and ripe dark fruit. The flavors are intense and peppery with lots of dark fruit. The taste curve is nicely balanced and finishes up with a nice hint of leather.

If I was stuck somewhere with only this wine to drink, I wouldn’t complain. I have to figure out where I can acquire some more…

This is a blend of 55% Shiraz and 45% Cabernet Sauvignon from Australia. It claims that the alcohol content is 14.5%. I’m not quite buying that as I drank the whole bottle and barely felt it. But this is a decent wine, although I thought it would go well with a nice broiled steak, I say don’t bother, as the wine and steak didn’t complement each other as well as I thought they would. Now if I could just find some chocolate, I think that would do okay.

This has a decent appearance, though not as dark as some American blends. The Aroma has a nice dark cherry aroma but after that, not much else. Some suggest raspberry – okay if you insist, although I think it is closer to dark cherry.

The flavor is nice dark fruit, a bit of peppery spice, perhaps a touch of clove and blueberry. This is very nice, as I said; I drank the whole bottle in one setting. Reason enough in my mind to give it a second chance. I think rather than beef, that I might want to try it with barbequed chicken or perhaps even a spicy dish such as tacos or enchiladas.

If you can find it, pick up a couple of bottles. You’ll not regret it.

This was a special wine tasting event because the line-up included a few wines with list prices over $100.

The idea was to compare some nice Cabernet Sauvignons and blends from Oakville/Rutherford AVA, Stags Leap AVA and Mount Veeder AVA.
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The color is a very nice dark purple, with nice legs indicating a high alcohol content. It says 16.2% on the label.

At first whiff, I smell only yeast. I think that comes from the screw top, as I’ve noticed that in the last few screw top wines that I’ve tasted right after opening them up.

I let it sit in the glass for a few minutes, and then I smelled intense and ripe dark fruit.

The flavor is a tart but also ripe. I taste blackberry, blueberry and a little strawberry. The taste curve is nicely balanced, especially the finish. There is a nice spiciness from the alcohol, which I also like. I think that the tartness indicates that I opened this one a couple of years before it was intended. That’s okay with me, because this is quite nice as it is.

$22 and a screw cap warning!

I guess I better write something about this one before it is gone.

It is very dark purple and looks nice!

Smells like ripe dark fruit. They say “with plum pudding aromas” like we’d know what the heck they are talking about. Come on guys, I’m not sure that I would ever want to even think about tasting something called plum pudding. I’ll stick to banana, chocolate, vanilla and butterscotch pudding thank you very much.

Okay, so I’m not quite sure which dark fruit I smell. I don’t think it is dark cherry, perhaps a jammy blackberry and I want to say that it has a touch of gardenia in there, but that is very subtle.

It is very smooth in the mouth, almost elegant. It might store for a bit, but I don’t know that it would improve. Let’s just say drink it as soon as you get it home along with your favorite pizza, pork loin or southwestern meal.

It tastes great and I’d buy it again.

Still the best $10 that you can spend on a bottle of wine!

I made an entry about lot number 34 last year. I like lot 37 too. It is quite a bit different than the previous versions that I’ve tasted.

This one has a lot of stuff that I like: beautiful dark purple color, dark fruit aroma, spicy-heat, earthy and well-balanced flavors, and a nice smooth finish which comes with a little heat of its own.

I don’t know exactly which grapes are in the blend, but most of the previous blends were Zinfandel, Carignane and Petite Sirah. This time they say there is a bit of Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon in there.

This is like a Rhone blend on steroids.

It has a nice dark purple color. There are aromas of dark chocolate, dark fruit such as blackberry, heavy alcohol and perhaps a touch of licorice. In the mouth, it is slightly acidic, there is a lot of fruit, but it is hard to distinguish which. I think that there is a bit of dark cherry or blackberry. There is a bit of heat on the finish from the alcohol. Overall it is a decent wine. I think it will hold until about 2007. Price was about $24.

Their web site lists an award winning “2003 Grand Reserve Barbera” but my bottle doesn’t say anything about it being a Grand Reserve so I don’t think that the bottle I had is the same thing.

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Who would be so crazy as to pass up the opportunity to sample these great wines at one sitting? Well not me!

Last night, a group of us got together to taste the following:

2000 and 1998 Château La Nerthe Châteauneuf-du-Pape

1989 Château La Nerthe Châteauneuf-du-Pape Cuvée des Cadettes

As a group, we were most impressed with the 1998 version, followed by the 1989 and then the 2000. At first we did not feel that the 2000 was anywhere near the quality of the other two, but after sitting open for about an hour, it really opened up and smoothed out. It is indeed worthy.

Here are the comments from the group on each of the wines:

2000 Château La Nerthe Châteauneuf-du-Pape
Light purple in color, a slight barnyard aroma at first but that burns off after a bit. There is a touch of eucalyptus. After sitting, this turns vegetative with a touch of bell pepper. The flavors are hot, earthy, mushroom, plum with a eucalyptus aftertaste. It has a spicy finish. We were trying to find a way to describe an almost clove flavor, but couldn’t come up with a better word. There is some pomegranate or perhaps current flavor there also.

The above description fit the wine after it set for a half an hour. But after sitting open for an hour, it really changed for the better. Our notes state that it becomes much smoother after opening up. The aroma contains raspberry and dark fruit. The flavors include cherry and black pepper. The finish has nice pepper and is now very elegant.

1998 Château La Nerthe Châteauneuf-du-Pape
A bit deeper in color than the 2000. At first there is a pleasant yeasty aroma which turns to strawberry with a touch of wintergreen. In the mouth, it is very nice, very smooth. There an almost maple syrup or brown sugar sweetness which caries through the velvety, elegant finish.

1989 Château La Nerthe Châteauneuf-du-Pape Cuvée des Cadettes
Darker purple than the 1998, starting to show its age just a bit. The aroma is earthy, creamy mocha and black pepper. We tasted black pepper with a distant hint of blueberry. The finish is beautiful. This wine is ready to drink now.