The Desert Wine Guy - 2013 Cline Zinfandel

   So today folks I have one of those short reviews on a wine that I unfortunately did not care for. Todays review is on the 2013 Cline Zinfandel. Cline Cellars is a family owned winery located in the Carneros region of Sonoma County, California. The winery is on a 350 Acre estate. Cline was started in 1982 in Sonoma and is owned by the Husband and Wife team of Fred & Nancy Cline.
   Well folks let's go ahead and get started. Before getting into this review I would like to note that I cannot find this wine anywhere on the Cline Family website. I can find the 2013 Sonoma California Zinfandel but this particular wine I am reviewing seems to have disappeared from the companys site and as you'll see it's probably for a good reason.  To start off here I received this wine from the Wine of The Month Club (http://www.wineofthemonthclub.com/) which I absolutely love by the way. I was initally impressed by the bouquet of this wine due to the fact there were notes of deep cocoa, caramel and sweet fruit. As with any wine if the bouquet is super nice we all get our hopes up. From experience however, we all come to learn and understand that just because a wine is pleasing to the nose does not necessarly mean that the wine will be pleasing to the palette which is where it is most important. Folks I have to tell you that this is one of those wines. While very pleasing on the nose and in the glass where the wine displayed a nice medium bodied Red the wine was less than impressive on Palette. 

   Speaking of the Palette here is where the wine falls apart and disapoints. I first tasted this wine just after opening it and I was not impressed. Figuring that this wine might possibly need some time to open up I went ahead and gave it about 45 minutes in hopes that the wine would indeed open up and I would get to enjoy it. After the 45 minutes the wine didn't change folks and I remained unimpressed. Here is a very fruit forward Zin that is full of over the top and overly dominating Red fruit in the form of dark, sweet cherry. While there is the ever so slight note of Chocolate that is just enough to detect it is not anywhere near strong enough where it could do anything positive for this wine. There was perhaps a slight note of Black Pepper but even that is not enough to make a difference. A candied, Jammy fruit bomb is basically what you have here folks. This has to be a very young Zin fans that we have here and is clearly not representative in any way of it's varietal. There are no Tanning whatsoever and no acidity. Basically there was nothing to tell you that you were drinking a Zinfandel varietal wine.
   With the review of this wine I am introducing the new improved and more defining Desert Wine Guy Rating Scale. Take some time and check it out. Speaking of the new scale, on the Desert Wine Guy Rating Scale I give this wine 84 points.

                                                                                                                    The Desert Wine Guy


Unbelievable  95-100 - Perfect or just about
Excellent        90-94 -  Wine just blows you away. Just makes you yearn for more.
Very Good     86-89 - Has character, is well balanced, & distinctive.
Good              83-85 - Drinkable, ordinary, non-distinctive, does not hold to
                                       varietal standards
Did not like   78-82 - Not recommended

www.desertwineguy.blogspot.com/

www.facebook.com/DesertWineGuy?fref=nf

https://twitter.com/DesertWineGuyLV

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgCUb3w1n2S_UGU2yYRkFYQ/videos