05
Aug
2021
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Category: Uncorked Tonight
(January 2, 2021) ... This is crazy that I have a bottle of this "value priced" Malbec in the cellar - sometimes I really gotta give my head a shake - but I took it upstairs and pulled the cork. Aromas hit aggressively, it smelled like walking into a high end coffee shop, but there is also lingering notes of blackberry hanging around; the tannins are fine and silky with a little mocha backing (fits with the coffee shop aromas) plus there's good acidity keeping things from going out of whack. Surprisingly, still a decent bottle of wine.
03
Aug
2021
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Category: Uncorked Tonight
(January 1, 2021) ... First bottle of the new year, if you don't count the bubbles I had at midnight ... I had written an article about Cortona Syrah a few years back for Quench magazine, so now I was interested to see how these wonderful wines age.
This bottle started with lots of dark fruit and spice, and still shows a nice vibrancy and liveliness - I then decided to try a little experiment with this. I noticed that at room temperature it was fairly muted, but not unattractive, showing notes of cassis, blackberry, smoky, and white pepper; there's even a nice dustiness to the finish - but here's where the experiment comes in, I decided to grab one of my "water wings"-like chilling sleeves to give the bottle a little cool down; the outcome was a palate that came across with more dark fruit character. After about an hour to an hour and a half it dries out considerably, sure there's still a nice dark fruit core, but its back-end has become dusty dry and chalky - but that first hour was a revelation in age-ability of these wines.
