A little Christmas Eve tradition I have for myself is to make a fancy meal, drink high-quality wines, and watch the most non-Christmas movie of all, The Hunt for Red October. So I grabbed myself a porterhouse, made some mashed potatoes, and found a California cabernet to pair.
It's a 2020 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from famed producer Dave Phinney, making wines under the Orin Swift label. We've carried Orin Swift stuff at D'Vines for a while, easily recognizable by their funky labels. This 15.30% ABV wine is aged for 14 months in French Oak barrels, 30% being new oak (not second fill, etc.)
Also, the bottles are very heavy and thick...initially, judging by the weight, I thought it was a liter bottle. Nope, it's just a big, chonky 750mL.
I left it out to decant for a few hours in my Reidel magnum decanter, giving it a swish and swirl every 30 minutes or so. Initial aroma is of tobacco, leather, and some earth. Not much fruit or spice.
On the tongue, it's not as big and burly as I'd expect a Napa cab to be, but that's fine by me. California cabernets have a reputation for being powerhouse reds; while they can be, they can also present like the Palermo: silky, delicious, dark and smooth with some good structure and complexity. There's some dark fruit notes in there, like blueberry with some chocolate. It's off-dry, which I find fits nicely with the meal. There's very little alcohol flavors to speak of, and the moderate dryness gives it a nice feeling as the wine is sipped. I kept some in the decanter and came back to it the following day; the flavors didn't change too much, and perhaps the wine was a touch softer than directly out of the bottle.
I picked this up at Irving Wines & Spirits in Mt. Pleasant, DC, for $54.99, and while it's beyond what I'd suggest most people spend on a bottle, it's a a holiday treat for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment