Edgewood Estate Vineyards St Helena Triangle Premiere Lot 54 Napa Valley Malbec 2002
With the kids and grandkids over for after church Sunday dinner, grand-daughter Lucy accompanied me down to the cellar to select the dinner wine. She chose this bottle sitting in the rack at her eye level, for its purple foil, her favorite color, and it turned out to be an excellent choice!
Purchased at auction, this Napa Valley Premiere label is a limited special release bottling for the famous Napa Valley charitable auction. This was ideally suited for our beef tenderloin Sunday dinner. Upon opening, the room filled with fruit and floral aromas. While initially a bit closed, the wine opened gradually, progressively over the course of the hour, and as it was being finished, we were all wishing we had more. This was even better than a previous bottle and recollections as per earlier tasting notes. At fourteen years of age, I sense this is drinking at the apex of its drinking window now, better than back in 2011, not likely to improve further with age, but certainly having several years of pleasurable drinking yet, if only we had more. This may have been the most memorable Malbec I've tasted to date.
This is a one of a kind - one time special selection Lot 54, from the
2002 vintage bottled for the 2004 Napa Valley Vintners annual Premiere
wine tasting and auction. Its an eye opener to be on the lookout and pay
attention to Napa Valley Malbec as a robust tasty food friendly wine.
One of the traditional “Bordeaux varietals”, Malbec has characteristics that fall somewhere between Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, used to add deep color and tannin based structure, backbone and complexity to the blend. These characteristics make for a delicious savoury and hearty wine that goes well with hearty cheeses and beef. This was delicious with our Sunday beef tenderloin dinner.
Full bodied - dark inky purple color. Big full fruit and floral aromas, huge full, nicely balanced and polished forward flavors of supple blackberry, black raspberry and ripe plum, accented by a layer of dark chocolate and spice turning to smooth tannins on the lingering finish.
RM 92 points.
https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=685671
With the kids and grandkids over for after church Sunday dinner, grand-daughter Lucy accompanied me down to the cellar to select the dinner wine. She chose this bottle sitting in the rack at her eye level, for its purple foil, her favorite color, and it turned out to be an excellent choice!
Purchased at auction, this Napa Valley Premiere label is a limited special release bottling for the famous Napa Valley charitable auction. This was ideally suited for our beef tenderloin Sunday dinner. Upon opening, the room filled with fruit and floral aromas. While initially a bit closed, the wine opened gradually, progressively over the course of the hour, and as it was being finished, we were all wishing we had more. This was even better than a previous bottle and recollections as per earlier tasting notes. At fourteen years of age, I sense this is drinking at the apex of its drinking window now, better than back in 2011, not likely to improve further with age, but certainly having several years of pleasurable drinking yet, if only we had more. This may have been the most memorable Malbec I've tasted to date.
One of the traditional “Bordeaux varietals”, Malbec has characteristics that fall somewhere between Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, used to add deep color and tannin based structure, backbone and complexity to the blend. These characteristics make for a delicious savoury and hearty wine that goes well with hearty cheeses and beef. This was delicious with our Sunday beef tenderloin dinner.
Full bodied - dark inky purple color. Big full fruit and floral aromas, huge full, nicely balanced and polished forward flavors of supple blackberry, black raspberry and ripe plum, accented by a layer of dark chocolate and spice turning to smooth tannins on the lingering finish.
RM 92 points.
https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=685671
