One day, I organized a Californian wine tasting and while choosing the wines, I came across this one. The LCBO only had 5 bottles left in the whole of Ontario and they were in a nearby LCBO. To make things even better, they were discounted from $39.95 to $22.95 (within my price range). I had no choice and buy all of them, not knowing what I am getting. During the tasting, this wine proved to hold true to its achievements (though not prestigious) a Gold Medal in 2008 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition and a Gold Medal in 2008 Dallas Morning News Wine Competition. This review, however, is not from the tasting event, I opened a bottle in June and now I only have 3 bottles left for extremely special occasions.

This full bodied, integrated wine has intense bouquet of black currant, oak, vanilla, coconut and pencil lead. The tannins are refined to tannic (decant for 30 min) and the finish was long, smooth and silky. This wine can easily age gracefully for more than 10 years, yet is a definite treat now. Even though the alcohol is 15.8% (watch out, it gets you), somehow the wine is capable of pulling it off and not seeming alcoholic. My impression: DIVINE, 94 pts - would highly recommend buying if there were any left. Tasted June/10.

If you would like to see wines I recommend and that are still available at the LCBO, please visit this link (listed in my profile):

http://www.winealign.com/wino/dantrcka/recomended-wines-you-can-still-buy