Tag Archives: 2004

Clearview Enigma 2004

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The second wine to be served with lunch at Clearview. This time, a Merlot-dominant Bordeaux blend.Quite vegetal aromas: stalk, brambles, etc. With some time, super blackcurrent fruit leapt from the glass along with some vanilla oak. Still, a flavour profile suggesting perhaps marginal ripeness and/or a strong expression Merlot’s more “green” varietal character.The wine’s entry establishes a much more fruit-driven flavour profile than suggested on the nose, with ripe dark fruit, pepper and spice, plus edges of leafiness. Still, it’s a more elegant, savoury wine as opposed to a fruit-driven one. The middle palate fills the mouth well, showing good intensity of flavour. Very fine tannins help the flavour to adhere to the tongue and linger impressively. The wine improved with food, with the fruit flavours moving further forward in the wine’s balance. Definitely one to have with dinner as opposed to alone, where its angularity might become tiring after a few glasses.Clearview EstatePrice: $NZ40Closure: CorkDate tasted: December 2007

Napa Family Vineyards Napa Valley Finest Selection Reserve Merlot 2004

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Pencil shavings, olive, and strawberries dominate the nose of this wine; it’s not too shabby, but it never really seems to evolve much beyond fruitiness with an oak undertone. It’s kind of like Kool-Aid mixed with wood chips.

In the mouth, this wine seems frankly way too sweet for a Napa merlot – and it’s not sucrosité, but residual sugar I think I’m tasting here. Ewww, gross – there’s barely any acidity here at all, and the overall effect is thoroughly unpleasant. However, the tannins are fairly interesting: finely grained and almost Australian in style, they seem flown in from a much better wine. Sadly, though, the bulk of the wine just hangs there limply in the mouth, waiting for you to swallow so that you can move on to something else. In terms of flavor, there’s some indeterminate milk chocolate but that’s about it, and there’s not much in the way of length here either: once the wine’s gone, the flavor’s gone. It’s all very disappointing. I imagine this is precisely the wine Miles was talking about in Sideways – and I probably should have heeded his advice.

Napa Family Vineyards [but really fresh&easy]
Price: US $10.99
Closure: Diam
Date tasted: November 2007

Clonakilla Ballinderry 2004

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One sniff of this wine takes me back to the Clonakilla cellar door, where I first tasted and subsequently purchased the 2004 Ballinderry. At the time, I wasn’t sure about the wine. It seemed to be almost completely dumb on the nose, much more so than previous vintages, but I have enjoyed this Clonakilla Bordeaux blend on so many occasions that I bought a few purely on past performance.

A couple of years on, and as I say, one sniff takes me back, because it’s still quite a tight wine in terms of its nose. It is, however, starting to unwind, the way a stripper starts by peeling back the outermost layers of clothing. So I’m told. Aromas of dark, perfumed fruit emerge from the glass, with edges of leafy cabernet character and spicy, cedary oak. Very tight, coiled, but by now leaking a little.

The wine’s entry is a bit misleading, in that it is quite easygoing and quickly moves on to an elegant, medium bodied palate of pure, fleshy red berry fruit. Good intensity and complexity of flavour. But just as you begin to suspect the wine is a bit of a sheep in wolf’s clothing, the fine, ripe but rather abundant tannins make themselves felt. They don’t exactly swamp the fruit, but they are very assertive at the moment, and create a lengthy, puckeringly dry finish.

It’s pretty clear to me that this wine’s best years are ahead of it, and I may well wait 2-3 years before trying it again. Really good potential on the basis of this bottle. I’m about to tuck in to a big rump steak now and it will be interesting to see how the wine responds.

Update: food didn’t do much to tame this wine’s structure. Perhaps only time can do that.

Clonakilla
Price: $35
Closure: Cork
Date tasted: November 2007