You know, this was a pick from Total Wine (I think) I think from last September by Mrs. TJ. We'd been to Corridor Fine Wine (owned by the same chain) in Laurel, but had never experienced a 'true' Total Wine before. This was right after our decision to bail on going to Napa for a week after September 11th. We decided to wine and dine ourselves locally, instead (sadly, our next Wine Country trip won't come until 2004 at the earliest now).
Anyway, it was all very much fun to go ga-ga over all of the wine they had there. So we picked up a few mixed cases, I think and this was one of them. We'd just had a bunch of good experiences with Cotes-du-Rhones, so we went picking stuff willy nilly.
Which is a shame.
Because this wine sucks.
It's got a nice color and all, but it is just plain funked up. The nose is all wrong. It smells of sour cherries, wet clay and green-ness (vegetables?). At first I thought it smelled a bit like tobacco, but I think it was fleeting at best, and, more likely, my imagination looking through rose-colored glasses.
Suffice it to say that this wine is, in the words of one of my cats -- 'Bleah.'
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