This wine had a quite deep ruby red colour with heavy legs, and a lot of sediment. The bouquet showed strong vanilla smokey oak and plum berry fruit.. The taste had smooth plum fruit chocolate start, and a strong tannin oak finish. It was an intense style with strong tannic balance, and quite high alcohol (14.5%). It won a gold at the NZ wine awards in 2003.
Note 1: I am not really a wine expert (just an enthusiastic amateur), so please don't take my recommendations as anything more than a rough guide to these wines. I can take no responsibility if you buy a lot of this particular wine, on my recommendation, and then regret it!
Note 2: You may not fully agree with my evaluation of these wines, as a lot of this is quite subjective. I tend to put a lot of emphasis on complexity and intense characteristic and varietal flavours and bouquet, so if you disagree you might just have different priorities.
I usually write a blog post about once a week. The latest post can be viewed here: Unity Through Division: Sometimes hard decisions need to be made to make genuine progress. (posted 2024-11-18 at 19:13:00). I do podcasts too!. You can listen to my latest podcast, here: OJB's Podcast 2024-08-22 Stirring Up Trouble: Let's just get every view out there and fairly debate them..