#wine1percent

Pinot from Paso… World’s shortest book! Except this isn’t grown in Paso–although it kinda smells and tastes like it. Thick garnet in the glass, ambering heavily towards the rim. Burnt, concentrated fruit dominates the nose, a dirty–rather un-fresh stew of candied cherry and overt leather and alcohol. There’s quite no redeeming *pinot* earth, funk or barnyard apparent in it. Tasting it changes…

The ONLY bottle of wine at my Smart & Final with an alarm clamped to the capsule. Yes, they carry far more expensive wines. You KNOW you like it.

2018 OPOLO Zinfandel ‘Mountain Zinfandel’ Paso Robles 15.7

https://opolo.com/

Beautiful bright clear ruby garnet. There’s a smoky property to Aglianico that does not come from barrel-aging. In fact, the winemakers in Taurasi insist on careful no-ox handling of the fruit to preserve this quality–some of it in straight SS–and frankly, *preserving a smoky quality* is something I was a bit taken aback to in regards to early fruit handling. Full and round in the nose, fruit a…

Pulled this @torresalegre ‘Cru Garage’ grenache–the last one in the cellar. Peak or a bit past, bricking hard, needed some air to blow off bottle-funk but became a splendiferous drop with tuna ceviche, quail and ribeye. Dusty concentration, wrackinly dry and acidic, fruit settled down into rich preserves, tannin still ram-rodding through. An entirely enjoyable–though tired–bottle at 980 pesos.…

Spicy brilliance, a peppery affair after soggy hardwood sawdust and a ridiculously deep dark grimy nose of ground-rock stew, blackberry aspic and desert shrubbery. Shoe-leather and too-late tangerine create a magical co-dependence between alcohol, mold, petrichor, briar and fruit.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an incredibly complicated Syrah–nor is it expensive–it just is ripe and textured and…