Today's review will be a rather short one because that is really all this so so Napa Valley Cabernet really deserves. Today's review is of the 2013 Dominican Oaks Cabernet Sauvignon. This is a wine that you really can't find any information about for some reason. The makers of this wine are the Rutherford Wine Company however when you go to their webpage you can't find anything on this wine, they make no claim to the label. The only way I knew they made it was because I looked at the back of the bottle. There is no other information about this wine that I can find available. This is a $20 bottle of wine that no one wants to take credit for. I would love to tell you more about the wine from the angle of the makeup of the grapes (blending) or a little about the winery but since no is willing to take ownership of the wine I guess I won't worry about it.
Call me weird but when I pour a wine into my glass I enjoy pouring a very small amount. I believe rightly or wrongly, that this gives the wine more of an opportunity to open up quicker and allows me to really get into the swirling of the wine. I also feel that since there is so little in the glass it allows more room for air to mix in quicker. I am not saying there is any scientific evidence to this but it sounds good in my mind :) This can be a detriment as well because by the time I am half way thru the bottle Mrs. Desert Wine Girl has Dinner ready and there is still half a bottle left that goes down the sink drain since I don't like wine sitting around even for a day.
Now to the wine and what I thought of it. First remember that we are talking about a $20 bottle of wine. With all the great wine being offered in today's market at prices just under this wines price, I feel this wine should stand out. Now while that is fresh in your mind I want you to think about the fact that this wine is VERY fruit forward and VERY sweet. In the glass the wine looked pretty nice however and I had hopes for a good wine to be in the cards. A medium to dark, inky / Burgundy in color appearance sat in the bowl of my glass. The Bouquet consisted of Caramel, Black Berry and Hibiscus....still promising I thought and I was getting more excited in anticipation. For $20 this would be what I should expect and it is what I thought I was about to receive. Here however is where expectations met reality and you will see what the results are.
From the very first sips of this wine till the very last sip of this wine the wine changed or opened up very little. On my Palette I consistently tasted Oak and Black cherry but to me the overly dominate note in this wine was a very fruity Black Cherry that carried with it a lot of sweetness. There were nice notes of Cassis and there were also some nice Tannins but they couldn't help this wine much. Because the Cassis and tannin's were so nice I did however raise the final score on this wine by 1 point but the overall sweet notes simply couldn't be overcome enough to raise it more than that.
I'm not going to sit here and say that this wine was not O.K but it was really just an average fruit forward, hastily made Cabernet Sauvignon. I won't even use the word decent to describe it. There are many of these wine out there and if the wine was less expensive for what it was I might have raised the score another point for value but not at this price point, no way. Although the Bouquet may seem to have been nice I didn't find this wine really expressing itself or able to use it for it's benefit. The notes as described were there but they didn't ....yell out that they were there, they were simply present. If I had to use one word to describe the wine it would be "sweet". If you like a fruit forward Cabernet Sauvignon, as I do but hate when they are dominated by sweetness than you seriously need to look elsewhere. This wine sits at a price point that I feel more, much more is expected of it. There was some Caramel in it when the wine opened up but still not enough to make any meaningful impact.
Bottom line here is that unless you like the fruit forward, overly sugary tasting red wine this is not the wine for you. There are a lot better and for a less expensive price that blow this wine away. If you are looking for one here ( http://desertwineguy.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-desert-wine-guy-2011-black-stallion.html) is my review on one. For $10.99 you will have yourself an excellent fruit forward yet NOT overly sweet, expressive Cabernet Sauvignon that I rated at 93 points on The Desert Wine Guy Rating Scale. As for this wine well it can't hope to touch that rating and I place it at 86 points on The Desert Wine Guy Rating Scale.
The Desert Wine Guy
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