Reviews

Chateau des Charmes 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon
August 28, 2007 ... Chateau des Charmes seems to have made the leap from 2002 to 2005 very quickly. It wasn’t long ago that I was buying up bottles of their 2002 St. David’s Bench Sauv each time I was by the winery because I could taste the ageing potential within the bottle, and furthermore I didn’t want to be caught without at least one to drink in 2012. The ’05 model is a beauty as well. It has a red fruit and blackberry nose; while the palate comes in stages. First, red fruit: raspberries and strawberries open the show and they linger pleasantly on the front palate. As the wine flows through to the mid-and-back palate the fruit turns dusty and oaky with a firm tannin finish. This was released with a 2005 Cabernet Franc [listen to the review on my podcast] and comparatively this is the fruitier of the two; though there’s still lots of the age-ability in this here bottle. Price: $25.00
2005
Red
Cabernet Sauvignon
0
$25
Canada
Ontario
Niagara Peninsula
at the winery
http://www.chateau-des-charmes.com
2011-06-19
(Re-Tasted December, 2011) ... We went out for dinner for my birthday this evening, a diner called Angels here in St. Catharines - no it's not fancy but perfect for what we wanted: casual and enjoyable, I had the rack of ribs deal which was quite good. Anyway, when we arrived home we opened two bottles of wine, a white for Erica (my wife) and a red for me. Forget the white, it was something cheap and cheesy and as it turned out was not my wife's favourites by a long shot, on the other hand, for me I opened a bottle of Chateau des Charmes 2005 St. David's Bench Cabernet Sauvignon with much excitement. The nose started off with cassis, cedar and spice while the palate was very leathery and cedary. I decided to let it sit a bit in the glass and see what happened. A half hour later the wine was smelling of spices, cherry, clove and cinnamon, quite alluring; while the palate was blackberry, clove and lots of wood spice ... from there another half hour went by and the wine started showing lots of wood character and the fruit started to disappear completely - as I wrote in my notes, "showing lots of wood and a dearth of fruit". Funny thing, the lone fruit fly who seemed to be roaming our house the past few days drowned in the glass - that is good news. Also interesting to note, at this hour-plus mark when the wine was poured straight from the bottle the wine had plenty of fruit, it was just as it hit the air for longer than 10 minutes that the wood started to dominate. Moral of the story: drink fast for fruit, drink slow for wood.

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