This week two new wines, and we’ll be sticking with Cabernet Sauvignon this time. One was very good and pretty appropriately priced, the other had very little to offer and got a resounding thumbs down from both Cheri and myself. here they are:
2010 Chateau Smith and 2011 Line 39
Here are the tasting notes:
Wine: 2010 Chateau Smith Cab Sauv Winery Location: Washington State
Tasted By: Neil & Cheri Date: Feb 16-17, 2013
Tasting Notes: This is a very classy and elegant Cabernet Sauvignon. It reminds me of a Chateau Montelena Cab we had a couple of years ago at the Newport Wine Festival (which we don’t recommend by the way, and which should never be confused with the Newport Mansions Food and Wine Festival – which we heartily recommend). This Chateau Smith is deep red/purple with dark fruits on the nose out of the bottle. Those dark fruits carry to the palate. Almost full bodied, it finished very long. This is classic cabernet, done is a more reserved style. Theres some tannin and this will age quite nicely for a while I would think. We can’t tell you how it evolved over a day in the bottle because we drank it all up! We’ll get another one and decant it for an hour and report back on that. This is quite good, as Charles Smith’s wines usually are.
Price Point – $17 locally
Would We Buy It? – Yes. We always like Charles Smith’s wines, whether it’s the in your face Boom Boom Shiraz or this elegant and restrained cabernet. We think it’s good value for a wine of this quality.
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Wine: 2011 Line 39 Cab Sauv Winery Location: Central Coast, CA
Tasted By: Neil & Cheri Date: Feb 16-17, 2013
Tasting Notes: This is deep red out of the bottle with a very restrained nose. The initial palate has some fruit and starts with some classic cabernet flavors. That’s it. Then it disappears. Nothing on the mid-palate. No finish. No length. Extremely unimpressive and not worth drinking at any price point. From the bottle label:
“…special bottling..”, “…expressive and approachable…”, “…rich with black chery aromas and beautifully rounded by flavors of luscious dark chocolate and ripe plum…”.
To borrow a phrase from an earlier post, are you kidding me? This wine is dead, and they use terms like luscious, ripe and expressive. They were obviously drinking something else and got confused.
To be fair – we capped the bottle and returned to it the next day. Maybe it needed some air. Nope. Same thing exactly, which is easy to remember because it was nothing.
It’s possible it’s completely closed down and will live another day. I tend to doubt it.
Price Point – $10.50 locally.
Would We Buy It? – Nope. Never. Don’t you either.
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There you have it. One up and one down, but the down was one of the poorest bottles we’ve opened in years. The Chateau Smith was certainly worth the shot however.
A votre sante!
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