Color: Deep Garnet

Nose: Sweet cherry with cinnamon and oak notes

Palate: Rich, spicy, concentrated cherry and marionberry flavors that almost explode on the palate. Good through the mid-palate, but the wine dies a little on the finish. Good acid balance, with tannins lurking, but not readily apparent.

Conclusion: A very nice wine, with plenty of fruit and acid to last for several more years, but drinking very nicely right now. The rest of the office seems to concur since it disappeared in about two seconds. 91-92 points.

Not to be combative, but how does a wine that "dies a little on the finish" merit 91-92 pts? I usually reserve that kind of score for wines with fairly long finishes in addition to other fine attributes. Just trying to get a gauge on your thoughts about the wine.

jb

I think I made a poor choice of words. Compared to the explosion of fruit on the palate at the beginning, the wine finished weaker. The wine's finish was not extraordinarily long, but it wasn't short either. The way I would look at this wine is that if the finish matched the first taste, I probably would have rated it a 94 to 95.

If I recall correctly (and at my age, that doesn't always happen ), I believe the WS gave this wine a rating in the 92-93 range.

An additional thought. I think that I tend to be over-sensitive to wines from the mid-palate back. I believe too many wines are made for that up-front fruit impact at the expense of overall balance. Too many wines I taste, Pinot Noir in particular, lack any kind of mid-palate presence at all - and still get great scores. They go staight from front to finish with nothing in between. This wine had a formidable mid-palate presence and the finish just couldn't quite keep up. So the front end was great, the mid-palate was great, and the finish was very good. Add the interesting flavors and the overall richness and concentration and you have a wine in the low 90s.

(edited to correct my now horrible typing)

Thanks for the clarification, Duke.

jb

Actually, you had a good point.