Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Sherwood Estate Wines 2003 Stratum (New Zealand)

I have a database system to keep track of my wines called Cellar! - maybe it's not the best system I have ever seen (and I have seen plenty over the years), but it does the job effectively, is affordable and is easy to maintain ... enough about that though. Sometimes while I am adding in new bottles, or removing ones I have drank, I come across a wine I had no idea I had ... this was one of those bottles. The reason it stood out to me was not the label, the winemaker, or the vintage - it was the grape blend, one so odd and strange I figured I must have written it down wrong - so I searched out this bottle on my wine racks to see if I had indeed erred. Nope the strange combination of grapes was indeed as I had written it for they were clearly marked on the bottles front label: Merlot /Pinot Noir /Pinotage - something told me I just had to try this bottle before any other. So I set aside the bottle I had put out for tonight and popped the cork on this oddity. At first the smells were vanilla and cinnamon with a fuzzy fruit, raspberry, and a rather interesting spice quality. As it opens the fruit drops out of the nose and leaves the spices, vanillas and cinnamons behind. On the palate, first impressions were of just a wet wine, non-descript, and somewhat odd in flavour ... as it opened earthy tones came out along with some raspberry vinegrette notes which all ended with a cranberry finish. Turns out, with all that oddity in the description it was a nice easy drinking wine for the evening ... but odd was definitely the word I would use, odd indeed. For those interested as to what kind of glass I drank it from - I chose a Pinot Noir glass.

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