| Recently tasted at FH's farewell dinner, 2/11/2002. The wine is an opaque purplish red, so dense that it appears black. On the nose, a concentrated blackcurrant, cherries and black berries, with whiffs of vanillin oak. The wine was decanted at 6.30pm. When we first tasted it a couple of hours later, it was like a monolithic block of flavour, american oak and tannins. With much swirling of the glass over the next two hours, the wine opened up a bit more. On the palate, the structure of the wine is massive, a profusion of super concentrated black berries and cherries, laced with dark chocolate and shot through with warm coconut + vanilla tones. The tannins are fine but grippy, though not too mouth puckering. As it evolved, the wine became more rounded and the tannins smoother but still stood out a little. FH reckons the tannins will outlive the fruit - I don't know enough about wine evolution/aging to predict what will happen, except that at present, it's still too young for my taste - in 5-10 years time, this wine could surprise us all... |
