Monday, July 25, 2011

La Puerta 2007 Shiraz (Argentina)

Not everybody agrees with me on the plastic cork issue ... well not everybody that sells wine.  Most winemakers and winery owners know the effects plastic (synthetic) corks have on their product and my own experience has shown me that about 80% of the bottles I open that are closed with plastic or synthetic have some kind of fault.  So when I unwrapped the capsule from this bottle I was skeptical as to what I would find in the bottle.  Thankfully, to a degree, this was one of the wines in the 20th percentile that seem to be, for the most part, unscathed by a bad closure decision.  The nose was mostly pepper and blackberry with a hint of an oxidative quality that was so slight it took awhile to come out.  On the palate more dark fruit and white pepper with a port-like mid palate that may or may not have been produced through too much air getting past that cork.  Not as bad as I anticipated, but once again I wish producers would mark somewhere on their label that they used an alternative closure so I (and you) wouldn't hold onto these bottles past there prime (which is no more than 2 years).

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