Wine tasting on February 8, 2008

This was small wine tasting. Present are Uncle N, Uncle E, and Winepath. We tasted three bit unusual wines and we all had difficult time in placing these wines in terms of grape varieties as well as country of origin. All were tasted blindly and they appears as we tasted them

1.Domaine De Baron'arques Limoux 2004, Score=2

Limoux is an area of the Languedoc quite close to the city of Carcassonne. The team from Baron Philip de Rothschild made this which appears quite different from usual reds from this region. The choice of six grape varieties are merlot, cabernet sauv and franc, syrah and grenache. The last one escapes me but could have been Cinsault.

The tasters are totally baffled. However, we thought of mixture of grapes and noted green pepper nose to suggest cab franc. The nose has a slight funk with hints of green pepper ad caramel. The palate is rather autere and bit thin with sour cherry and a hint of chocolate. Good tannin. Rather short finish. Cali Cab and cab blends are mentioned. But the tasters did not think of European origin of this wine.

2. Cchia Amarone della Valpolicella 2001, Score=2

We again did not even thought of Amarone. The color indicated the age with brown tinge. Nose was slight funk indicative of European origin but otherwise bit closed. The palate is also austere without more characteristic raisin taste. Rather long finish with bit of bitter taste (which could have been the hint). We thought this to be Italian probably Piedmont (north) because of rather austere palate. We are not sure this much of brown color and rather flat taste is due to poor storage (at the store) or this is the taste this wine supposed to be. We feel that this wine was probably not stored correctly and lost many of the taste characters.

P.S. What the heck is this label, is this some kind of extra terrestrial creature???


3. Finca Sandoval 2005, Score=2+

Again, tasters could not have even thought of Sapin to be the country of origin. Uncle-N had 2004 vintage twice rather recently but could not recognize this wine. Certainly the best of the tasting. This is unusual for spanish wines because this wine is made from mostly syrah (83% Syrah, 9% Monastrell, and 8% Bobal) in the high altitude reigon of Castilla-La Mancha located at the very center of the Iberian peninsula. The color is deep with purple fringe. The nose is good with slight funk and smoked plum. Rather smooth viscous mouth feel with black fruits and some earthiness. Nice long finish and well structured tannin.
2004 vintage got RP=93. If I am correctly remembering the taste of 04, it had more dense viscous feel with additional licorice and mocha on the palate. We will taste 04 in the near future to see what happens.