July 24, 2012

Cave Spring 2005 Cabernet-Merlot



(Re-Tasted July 2012) ... So a quick scan over my review from 5 years ago says I thought this wine had "ageability to spare", well, we're now 7 years from vintage date and I am not sure what to make of this wine - it's not bad, but it's not the greatest wine I've had at this age either, let me explain.  The nose was filled with peppered-raspberries and peppered-strawberries, while the taste gave nothing but lots of spiced oak and a cedary finish.  Time to pull out my Venturi aerator just to see if I could coax some fruit out of this bad boy.  I would have to say that blackberry and cassis did show up on the nose, but so too did it enhance the overwhelming pepper and oak notes - with a little more time in the glass the fruits melded together into what could best be described as a compote.  The flavours also seemed to benefit from the aeration.  Tastes of sweet dried fruit like blackberries and cherries showed up with some vanilla oak backing (there's that oak again) ... I also found that in the end the compote from the nose did find it's way to the palate.  But overall the one word that I would use to describe this wine would be "pepper" followed closely by "oak".  Have some in the cellar I would suggest aerating and drinking fairly soon.



No comments: