Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Plush, intense and vivid in flavor, this is aromatic with herbal cherry and currant character, leading into ripe fruit that's balanced with creamy, spicy, chocolate-tinged oak notes. A wine of great presence and length. Powerful, but not even close to being over the top. Drink now through 2015. 500 cases imported.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Bordeaux varietals begin with the 2005 Merlot Brookman Vineyard. Sourced from a 65-year-old vineyard, it is opaque purple-colored with an expressive perfume of toasty oak, mulberry, blackberry, black raspberry, and chocolate. Layered, rich, and thick, it can be drunk now but will evolve for 5-7 years.
With generous fruit and supple tannins, Merlot is made in a range of styles from everyday-drinking to world-renowned and age-worthy. Merlot is the dominant variety in the wines from Bordeaux’s Right Bank regions of St. Emilion and Pomerol, where it is often blended with Cabernet Franc to spectacular result. Merlot also frequently shines on its own, particularly in California’s Napa Valley. Somm Secret—As much as Miles derided the variety in the 2004 film, Sideways, his prized 1961 Château Cheval Blanc is actually a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc.
Known for opulent red wines with intense power and concentration, McLaren Vale is home to perhaps the most “classic” style of Australian Shiraz. Vinified on its own or in Rhône Blends, these hot-climate wines are deeply colored and high in extract with signature hints of dark chocolate and licorice. Cabernet Sauvignon is also produced in a similar style.
Whites, often made from Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc tend to be opulent and full of tropical, stone and citrus fruit.