Posts Tagged ‘Petit Verdot’
Varietal: 59% Cabernet Sauvignon; 19% Cabernet Franc; 11% Malbec; 6% Merlot; 5% Petit Verdot
Region: Napa, California – USA
Cost: $40 (SRP)
Winemaker’s Notes: Rich garnet color goes perfectly with the holiday season and it’s aromas of toasted hazelnut and winter spices make this wine the perfect gift for anyone on your list.
My Review: Another of the bottles that I received just before the end of the year, and on an unseasonable warm day on Sunday (pushing 70 in Virginia? Really?) my wife and I decided to throw a couple of steaks on the grill and a bottle of red wine sounded like the perfect pairing.
While there are some violet streaks going through the wine, it was a nice deep red in the glass and I picked up aromas of spice and dark berry. In the mouth there was a ton of fruit, but it was by no means a “fruit bomb”. By that I mean there was plenty of body and depth to the wine that allowed the wine to present nuanced fruit flavors and have a bit of complexity and a medium-smooth finish.
Varietal: 88% Cabernet Sauvignon; 5% Syrah; 3% Merlot; 2% Petit Verdot; 1% Malbec; 1% Cabernet Franc
Region: California – USA
Cost: $11 (SRP)
Winemaker’s Notes: The wine has a smooth texture and sweet, red fruit character that distinguishes California’s finest Cabernet Sauvignons, along with smoky oak, vanilla, and roasted nut accents to invigorate the palate and provide a lengthy finish. Enjoy with standing rib roasts, grilled steak, roast duck, spareribs, lasagna, or flavorful hard cheeses.
My Review: An evening where my wife was out and I was home alone with the dog to fend for myself on dinner usually only means one thing – steak, a baked potato, and a bottle of red wine to be enjoyed. There are worse ways to spend an evening. I’d been sitting on this sample until I could get around to cooking up a steak, and as tends to be the case, I’m glad I did.
I hope everybody had a fun and safe Memorial Day weekend filled with friends, family, cookouts, and good wine. On Saturday my wife and I decided to jump on the Virginia Wine Trail and hit a few vineyards – some we had been to before and others we hadn’t visited yet. Four vineyards, several bottles, and a wine club membership later and we lived to tell the tale, and now I get to share it with you.
- A shot from outside White Hall Vineyards
We started out our tasting at White Hall, partly because of the area we were looking to go tasting in, they were the first one open, but also because I we hadn’t actually been out to the tasting room in many years. On the Saturday morning we stopped in they were pouring 9 different wines and my wife and I were happy to sample them all.
We started out with two Chardonnays, the 2008 Chardonnay ($15) and the 2008 Chardonnay Reserve ($24). The stainless steel Chardonnay featured all the usual citrus and pear notes I would have expected, but had a smoother finish than I anticipated, though certainly not “oaky”. The 2008 Reserve featured a bit of oaky nuttiness on the nose and while it had the “oaked” finish I would expect, it was subtle and even my wife, who doesn’t usually care for oaked Chardonnay, preferred it to the stainless steel.
Varietal: 89% Cabernet Sauvignon; 6% Merlot; 4% Cabernet Franc; 1% Petit Verdot
Region: Napa Valley – California – USA
Cost: $20
Winemaker’s Notes: Rich, ripe, and focused with juicy blackberry and cherry fruit, cocoa and hints of mint all tied together with a creamy French vanilla middle and finish that in a word is…lingering.
My Review: So, full disclosure, I absolutely grabbed this bottle because the label design was interesting. As we all know, we eat with our eyes first, which is problematic when selecting a bottle of wine since we can’t use our nose, and in a bottle, reds in particular all sorta look alike. So, from time to time, I will narrow my selection down to two or three bottles and then pick the one with the most interesting label. Last Saturday was just such an occasion.
It’s Virginia Wine Expo time, and before I attended the 2011 Virginia Wine Expo (thoughts to come later), I had the change to taste the gold medal winning wines that were vying for the 2011 Governor’s Cup for red wine. Those wines were:
- 2008 Hiddencroft Vineyards Cabernet Franc
- 2008 Fox Meadow Vineyards Le Renard Rouge
- 2008 Cooper Vineyards Norton Reserve
- 2009 Keswick Vineyards Cabernet Franc
- 2009 Afton Mountain Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Estate Reserve
- 2008 Barboursville Vineyards Petit Verdot Reserve Read the rest of this entry »
Last night I had the opportunity to participate in a Twitter tasting of several bottles of Virginia wine, which I was rather excited about, given as how I live in Virginia and am always looking to both sample new wines from my home state and to help promote wines from my home state to those that don’t happen to live here. A selection of five bottles was chosen, 2 whites and 3 reds, and myself and several other tasters in person and many more online all worked our way through, sharing our thoughts. Here are mine.
2009 Tarara Nevaeh White
Just in case you were wondering “nevaeh” is heaven backwards. Yeah, that’s what I thought too. A blend of 70% Viognier and 30% Chardonnay, with all the Viognier on the nose and nothing but Chardonnay in the mouth. Crisp flavors of honeysuckle and pineapple with a slight oaky creaminess on the finish. It’s not a bad wine, and would go well with grilled chicken, but I have hard time recommending it at the $30 price point. It’s not enough of a game changer for the price point.
2009 Notaviva Ottantotto Viognier
Very light in color and with a very subtle nose that came out the more I let the wine open up, but was never very bold. Light and crisp with nice acid and a hint of sweetness on the finish that was anything from bubble gum and cotton candy to banana flavored Now n Laters. The consensus of the people I was tasting in person was that it wasn’t very “viognier-y”. Of the two whites, I liked the Tarara better, but would could justify the $20 for the Notaviva more.
2008 8 Chains North Dry Red Wine
A deep purple/red color. The wine is a blend of 33% Malbec; 30% Cabernet Sauvignon; 30% Petit Verdot; 5% Cabernet Franc; 2% Merlot. Later in the evening, when I was finishing this bottle, the cabernet franc really started to come out (not a bad thing), but at the tasting flavors and aromas of smoke, berry, tobacco, and a jamminess made it a great wine to want to pair with a steak. For $22 this is a great value and one I certainly plan to pick up again. Read the rest of this entry »
