Saturday, December 13, 2008


Last, but NOT LEAST: HARLAN ESTATE, 2004. A 5+, Wow!!
A great generous surprise from Uncle P, this unbelievable wine: color like garnet gold, nose of blue mountain coffee. the specific gravity of this wine (mass/volume, for all of you great physicists out there) must be enormous. Very port-like, raisin, pmmegranate quince jam, spearmint and bergamon. Well ballanced, superb cocoa and ghanaian dark chcolate (76.5% cocoa).
Here are the words of RP himself:

Wine Advocate The 2004 Harlan Estate is probably the most precocious and accessible Harlan Estate that this perfectionist team has made. Already compelling, the wine has notes of roasted coffee, charcoal, blackberry, spring flowers, and some background sweet, toasty notes. Dense, fleshy, exuberant, even flamboyant by the standards of Bill Harlan, this wine exhibits no jaggedness or rough edges, has relatively high tannins, but they melt away on the palate. The wine is sensationally well-endowed, long, and rich – a tour de force in winemaking. They can do no wrong at Harlan, and it is obvious, even in the most challenging vintages such as 1998, that this estate is a true grand cru/first growth, making wines of irrefutable world-class quality. Of course, none of this comes cheap, as the price is now moving up into the league with Screaming Eagle, but there are no shortage of takers. Score: 98. —Robert Parker, December 2007.

No comments: