Swedish Hill Cabernet Franc-Lemberger 2006

Noticeably light when poured, this wine doesn’t offer up much in the way of anything to smell other than suggestions of tomato leaf. Taste-wise it’s a real dog, with unpleasant, leafy, green, underripe flavors leading to a flat, almost sour, disappointing finish; with aeration, it improves somewhat to offer up something like a synthetic cassia and wild strawberry combination, but it’s still just not quite there.Let me at least praise the winemakers’ decision to leave well enough alone and not drown this wine in residual sugar; it is decidedly dry in and could be passed off as a lesser Loire red in a pinch. However, it doesn’t strike me as possessing any sense of place or even much of a reason for existing: at sixteen bucks a bottle, this wine is redonkulously overpriced. If you’re going to spend this much on wine, might as well get two bottles of Washington lemberger instead (which tends to be much more enjoyable thanks to the warmer climate) or an actual Loire wine (which at least will probably have some minerality and perfume there as well). I really, really don’t see the point of this wine at all – at least not at this price point.Swedish Hill
Price: $16
Closure: Cork

2 thoughts on “Swedish Hill Cabernet Franc-Lemberger 2006

  1. Re: “redonkulous”- sorry to drift off wine Chris, but is this a common term in the US? I heard a character use it on “Dexter” and am quite fond of it.

    cheers

    jeremy

    ps- loving the TNs from places I know nothing about. Hard for me to comment on them though. One day…

  2. I don’t know where that word came from, but I don’t remember having heard it before 2004 or thereabouts. I doubt it’s common, but some neologisms just demand you use them for some strange reason!

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