(Re-Tasted October 2010) ... When you look at a bottle of 2004 Ontario red you secretly hope you haven't waiting too long to drink it. This one's 6 years from vintage date, and a rather weak vintage at that, but this is a wine made by one of the old guard of Ontario winemaking ... it is also a single vineyard offering grown on the Montague vineyard, and finally, it's Merlot, a grape that does well in the big O and usually needs a few years to start showing well even in the best of years. With this pedigree and knowledge I opened this wine with a bit of enthusiasm. Smells were almost non-existent, maybe some dried and woody aromas started to emerge some 30 minutes after opening, but nothing really got traction in the aromas department. Tastes were dried dark fruit, black licorice, wood and still with some nice spice character. After 2 hours of being open it had gone more wood than fruit; but the interim was quite a pleasant experience.
October 25, 2010
October 11, 2010
Chateau des Charmes 2001 Estate Bottled Pinot Noir - Add Two More Years
(Re-Tasted - again - October 2010) ... On the back of this bottle I had written, "Hold Two Years: 12/05"; so either I was telling myself to drink it in December of 2005 or I lay it down in December of '05 and was saying I should drink by December 2007 - either way I missed the deadline ... both time. I opened this bottle for Thanksgiving (the Canadian version), we weren't having a traditional turkey dinner, instead I had whipped up a casserole using ground turkey, lentils and brown rice (actually tasted much better than it sounds) ... but I figured a Pinot Noir would make it feel more traditional than it was. I also had a bit of a scare when I cut two fingers chopping onions (the folks on the Food Network make it look so easy) ... so I really needed a drink once everything was in the oven. My previous foray with this wine, in April 2008, was not a good one - but I did not know that when I opened this bottle. I pulled out a Schott Zwiesel Pinot Noir glass and poured the wine in. The cork broke during the opening and it was a little on the moist side about 3/4 of the way up, but otherwise everything looked in good condition. The wine itself showed little sign of bricking, or browning, and the smells coming off it were pleasant enough, if slightly non-existent. The best way to describe the nose is what it settled into 20 minutes after opening, wooden-raspberries, up until then the wine was a little shy, giving away little at far as aromas go. Taste-wise it remained fairly closed through the entire hour and a half it was in the glass, lots of tannins and wood spice, fruit barely perceptible, if at all there. But it was not unpleasant to drink, in fact it seemed a nice pairing with the turkey-lentil casserole, and who knows maybe the wine needs even more time to come around - it has definitely improved since April 2008 when I could barely stomach it.
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