06
Nov
2014
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Category: Lost & Found / Taste it Again
(August 23, 2014) ... My experience with Lake Erie North Shore wines this particular weekend were all pretty disappointing, including this lame flight of CREW (Colchester Ridge Estate Winery) wines all from the 2005 vintage.
Kicked thing off with the king of reds and the one I had the most hope for, the 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon, what a mess; showed absolutely no fruit what-so-ever and was just a total oak bomb, like sucking on a wine soaked stave. Very unappealing. And even with time in glass it never showed better than this. To read the original review of this wine and a follow-up tasting from 2011 click here.
I then moved the tasting along with one of my favourite grapes, Cabernet Franc (2005) ... This one showed much better from the get go: anise, a little road tar (a la South Africa), some earthy character along with some dried fruit notes; but it didn't take long for the oak to overpower it (no longer than 20 minutes). A pleasant early starter out of the gate but was not meant for the long haul of an evening.
The Cabernet-Merlot blend (2005) was smoother and more mellow than its counterparts, it showed some real good promise from the outset and lasted, as a drinkable wine, for longer than the other two, but it too moved into the oaky and unappealing realm as time wore on.
A very disappointing flight to say the least. And seeing as the Franc and the blend are previously unreviewed wines they fall into the Lost & Found category and get a rating of TRASH.
27
Oct
2014
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Category: Lost & Found / Taste it Again
(August 22, 2014) ... I like to call these weekends of my life Big Chill Weekends after the 1983 movie starring Tom Beringer, Glenn Close, Kevin Kline, Jeff Goldblum and plenty of others you'd recognize on sight. If you've never seen it it's about friends getting together for a weekend (after the funeral for a friend, but let's leave that part out). Anyway, every year a group of old friends of mine get together in Niagara-on-the-Lake for a weekend of relaxation and frivolity. We each have our job. My one buddy supplies the house, another the food and, well, I'm in charge of the wine. This year I cleared off an entire rack and filled three boxes to bring along. Amongst them were some older Ontario bottles I've been wanting to re-try. Here are but two from that selection:
We opened a few bottles on night one of which I had one real surprise winner and one surprise of a dog. The winner was this Harbour Estates 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon ... Surprisingly smooth and barely showed its age: plum, black cherry blackberry, a real sweetness of fruit, with rich Port-like flavours. I guess the downside was that unlike Port it's a wine to enjoy right now, and I do mean by the gulp and guzzle full because it really started to show its age the longer it remained open. But that first half hour was a real sipping surprise sensation (sounds like a Beach Boys song doesn't it?). This one far exceeded my expectations (read my original notes about the wine at the time from March 2006).
After the high of the Habour Estates I looked very much forward to a bottle from the Lake Erie North Shore, a Colio Estate 2005 CEV Cabernet Franc Reserve, this one was a real disappointment, and a wine that really showed its age; the absolute best it could muster was dried tobacco leaves and from there it got a little long in the tooth as time went by. This was a bottle I had no previous note for and is therefore a Lost & Found bottle, and for that reason I give it the Lost & Found grade of TRASH.
More winner and loser wines were tried on day two.
