Friday, November 23, 2007

2003 Hogue Cellars Merlot Columbia Valley

COLOR: 5/5 - More purple than red; very saturated.
NOSE: 11/15 - Initially there was lot of bacony goodness on the nose. That blew off pretty quickly and was left with muted cherry and leather. After 3 hours, vitually no nose. Points given for initial impression.
FLAVOR: 7/10 - Very straight-forward blackberry, black pepper, and leather.
FINISH: 6/10 - Not much going on with the very short finish. Echos of the flavors just slide away leaving nothing behind.
POTENTIAL: 2/5 - Not a lot here that indicates any advantages to holding on to this any longer.
OVERALL: 2/5 - Maybe past its prime, this wine just couldn't get out of its own way. Overpowered by a very simple red sauce with pasta and completely collapsed within a few hours of being open. This bottle definitely needed to be decanted; there was a considerable build-up of sediment in the bottle. Not a bad wine, very light-fare friendly.
** SCORE: 83/100 **

I'm really surprised where this wine came out. My first 'great' (don't laugh) experience with wine came probably 10 years ago in my early 20's at a friend's wedding where I had a Hogue Riesling. I knew nothing about wine and they had the Hogue on the all the tables. I grooved to the slender bottle and marveled at the synthetic 'cork.'

Fast forward to when I picked up a mixed half-case of Hogue wines around a year ago (in-store sale + Mail-In Rebate = cheeeeeep wine!) CellarTracker told me to drink this wine before it's time had passed, so it came outta the cellar tonight... and just didn't do it for me. The nose right out of the bottle saved this from being an 82 point (or lower) wine.

As I continue to finish the glass/bottle (1+ glasses went into the pasta sauce tonight) and ramble on, I came up with an imperfect metaphor for the wine as it's drinking now -- purple dry-erase marker. Imperfect because it's not all vapory like a marker, but it's got this fake essence about it and, well, something that evidently reminds me of being in a white-boarding session at work.

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