(Re-Tasted December, 2011) ... We went out for dinner for my birthday this evening, a diner called Angels here in St. Catharines - no it's not fancy but perfect for what we wanted: casual and enjoyable, I had the rack of ribs deal which was quite good. Anyway, when we arrived home we opened two bottles of wine, a white for Erica (my wife) and a red for me. Forget the white, it was something cheap and cheesy and as it turned out was not my wife's favourites by a long shot, on the other hand, for me I opened a bottle of Chateau des Charmes 2005 St. David's Bench Cabernet Sauvignon with much excitement. The nose started off with cassis, cedar and spice while the palate was very leathery and cedary. I decided to let it sit a bit in the glass and see what happened. A half hour later the wine was smelling of spices, cherry, clove and cinnamon, quite alluring; while the palate was blackberry, clove and lots of wood spice ... from there another half hour went by and the wine started showing lots of wood character and the fruit started to disappear completely - as I wrote in my notes, "showing lots of wood and a dearth of fruit". Funny thing, the lone fruit fly who seemed to be roaming our house the past few days drowned in the glass - that is good news. Also interesting to note, at this hour-plus mark when the wine was poured straight from the bottle the wine had plenty of fruit, it was just as it hit the air for longer than 10 minutes that the wood started to dominate. Moral of the story: drink fast for fruit, drink slow for wood.
