From the bottle:

Cabernet Sauvignon – 65%     Syrah – 35%

Our flagship Winemaker’s Selection wine is made from a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah.  All the fruit comes from our Villa Alegre estate in the heart of the Maule Valley, where soils are poor and shallow and yield eight tonnes per hectare and fourteen months in french barrels.  This is an intense, complex wine with aromas of roses, cherries, berries and fig.  In the mouth it has a very good structure, with firm tannins, fresh black fruit, and a smokey, spicy character.

My thoughts:

Ok I was being lazy and went all Solo cup on this.  There happened to be a stack of blue Solo cups on top of the wine cabinet.  Stop judging me.  Anyway…this wine has heavy bouquet of berries and wood.  It actually reminds me of the smell of wood smoke from a fireplace in the late fall.  Upon the first sip I wasn’t quite so sure about this one.  After giving it a few moments and a second sip I started picking up on the specifics of this incredibly complex tasting wine.  It starts out with a slight hint of dark berries, then goes into a mellow flavor of figs with a floral hint and then ends with a smokey, peppery finish.  It’s dry.  I like that.  It’s that perfect amount of dry that entices you to take just one more sip…and then maybe one more…and then, oh hell I may as well pour another glass.  It is a very pretty super deep purple color and it hangs well on the sides of a plastic cup.  I’d imagine it leaving a much prettier set of legs in a proper glass.  But we’re not always all about proper in this house.

Food pairings?  It’s going pretty well with some garden Triscuits and Law and Order: SVU re-runs.  I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head that this would pair well with.  Maybe some of the harder cheeses.

On a scale of “this tastes like piss” to “oops, I just drank the whole bottle” I would give this a “Tastes like mid-December curled up on my mom’s couch in front of the fire with a good book.” Would I buy it again?  I wouldn’t be opposed to adding this in to a semi-regular rotation.

Final Grade: B+ It wasn’t holy shit I drank the whole bottle by accident (accidentally on purpose?) good, but it was half the bottle disappeared in a solid Sunday night unwind good.