EastDell Estates 2005 Cabernet Franc Reserve

Found August 2012

Here we go again, another wine that has been ruined by a producer's decision to cheap-out and use plastic to seal a bottle that has no business being under the worst closure known to man - heck I think you'd do better if you shoved a kerosene soaked rag in the top of the bottle, then at least I could use the wine for something other than drain cleaner.  The shame of it is this wine had such potential and you can mainly taste it rather than smell it.  The nose is laced with Madeira/Sherry notes and the taste is oxidative in nature and just getting worse the more air you swirl through the glass. - you can just make out the dark fruit and spice that would have be absolutely killer if it wasn't for the off-putting nature that already defines this wine.  I can't say it enough, if you are even thinking of closing your wines with a plastic cork, you aren't really thinking at all.  Now to find out the next bottle I opened and what this EastDell wine had the potential to be, read this review - from the same night. Lost & Found Rating:  Trash

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EastDell 2004 Pinot Noir Reserve

Click here to read the original review from July 2006 - OWR Newsletter #36

(Re-Tasted December 2008) ... It’s been awhile since I’ve done a Taste it Again note and there is no one happier then me to get back to this column … my last “box of fun” was loaded with foreign wines and Southbrook finds, so I’m so glad to be re-tasting a few past favourites.

I remember liking this wine so much back when I first tried it that I quickly scooped up another bottle when I was next at Eastdell and immediately put it into a box for further ageing (that’s the box of fun). But after today’s tasting I’m not sure how kind time has been to this wine. The nose proved to be a little finicky – sure I found the typical Pinot characteristics of cranberry, sour cherry, strawberry (in the form of licorice) and earthiness, but there was also a wet leaf / forest floor aspect and a funny alcohol smell that kept re-surfacing … in a wine that’s only 13% that’s not normal. Looking at the colour it seems to be darker than I remember (and I thought memories were suppose to fade – rim shot) – being more brownish and bricky. The palate seems fine though, with sour cherry, strawberry and earth – yet very uninspiring. I am reminded here about one of the things they say about Pinot Noir: it drinks in waves. It has its ups and downs during its evolutionary period, for 6 months its delicious, 3 months its dumb and stunted, another 4 months and it’s brilliant, and so on. Who knows, in two months time this one might have leapt out of the glass, but today – on December 15, 2009 – it just lay a little flat. On the other hand, we could just blame the plastic cork. If you have a bottle give it a little more time and see if it resuscitates itself.

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