Featured Wines - April 2012

Berton’s 2010 Black Shiraz is aptly named; it is as deeply colored as any wine on the planet. It presents itself as a brooding, foreboding potion, but appearances can be deceiving. This black Shiraz readily offers its olfactory and gustatory charms, beginning with an opulent aroma redolent with the savory scents of blackberry, plum, eucalyptus, and vanilla. On the palate the 2010 Black Shiraz continues its full flavored intense allure, but without a harsh tannic bite. Instead, ripe fleshy blackberry, chocolate, and mint flavors spread their pleasing warmth in the mouth.

The 2011 Runner Duck White captures the eye with a pale straw, sun kissed color and ingratiates the nose and palate with a mélange of tropical fruits, citrus, and crisp acidity that leave the thirsty gullet begging for more. In Vergenoegd’s Runner Duck White, guava, gooseberry, lemon verbena and a host of other flavors are set beautifully into a spirited frame that charms even after the wine has gracefully disappeared from the mournful throat that hopes another chilled bottle lay within arm’s length.

The 2010 Eidos de Padriñán Albariño is a wine made for those who truly love dry white wine, and we mean classic dry white wine, as Albariño is no buttery concoction or Chardonnay look alike. Rather, it is dry and thirst quenching like a cool ocean breeze. Its aromatic profile is both fresh and profound. The enticing scents of orange peel, pear, and stone fruits, mingle with a refreshing minerality.

The 2005 Morazzano Re Rosso stopped the tasting panel in its tracks – the once-lively conversation became a hushed silence as each panelist sampled the lush rose petal, dark fruit, and Tuscan leather aromas on the nose of this stunner. Visually the wine promised to be quite muscular with its deep translucent purple color, save a bit of lightening along the edges of the glass. Though the nose was so seductive, none of us could move on to tasting Re (meaning King, a fitting name for a wine such as this) until we had fully enjoyed the intense pleasures of its aromas.

The 2008 Château Armandière Ancestral Cahors is a more polished and refined version of the Malbec Americans have come to love. The Ancestral Cahors Malbec delivers all the size, boldness and intensity of an Argentine Malbec in the kind of refined and sophisticated expression for which the French are justifiably revered. Its nose promises a powerful experience, with dark, evocative fruit, leather and subtle coffee notes

McGuigan’s 2009 Bin Series No. 7000 Hunter Valley Chardonnay is a delightful, fruit driven wine that captures the classic tropical fruit and citrus undertones that characterize the best Hunter Valley Chardonnays.  It eschews heavy butter and vanilla tones that overly long stays in new oak barrels impart to many other New World Chardonnays.  Instead, McGuigan’s Chardonnay favors a subtle minerality that underscores the Hunter’s distinctive terroir.

The 2005 El Vinculo is a deep, rich, highly aromatic wine with everything going for it. In the nose it offers up plenty to get excited about in the form of deep blackberry and currant flavors, tobacco, wood smoke and Asian spices. And in the mouth this wine positively explodes with the aroma’s entrancing flavors, all of which are graciously conveyed in a velvety texture backed by fine grained tannins.