Today I am going to be taking a look into a wine from the state of Arizona. Todays wine review is of the 2014 Passion Cellars, Merlot that I purchased from the Winery itself while taking a trip to Jerome Arizona around two years ago. The wine cost me $35 and comes in at 13.6% on the Alcohol scale, it is aged for 15 months in French Oak. Let's go ahead and dig into this wine and see what it is all about and what I thought of it.
Pouring this wine into my glass I noticed immediately that it was extremely light almost like a watered down Cherry Cough Syrup. Seeing to the bottom of of my glass was not a challenge at all and brought potential issues immediately to my mind. Yeah, watered down Cherry Cough Syrup, that doesn't sound to appetizing does it? There was no Carbonation obvious nor any other weird issues noticeable.
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| Cherry Cough Syrup Appearance |
Moving to my nose now I will let you know that there is a strong Cherry/Wood type note intertwined with Cocoa. The nose is rather pleasing actually and reminds me of something I would drink on a cold Winter night, almost like a Madeira. I know, weird huh. Now please don't misunderstand what I am saying here, this wine did not turn out to be anything even similar to a sipping Liquor by any means it's just that the Bouquet that reminds me of one. Topping off the Bouquet is a wonderful scent of Caramel. Overall this wine has a welcoming scent almost like a Candle and one that presents the promises to be sweet as well.
So far if I am a reader of this review I am in a toss up so to speak. I can't figure out where this review is going. Did I like the pour and the Bouquet or not? Well, I guess you are indeed paying attention because in order to understand where I am going you would have to be unless you could read my mind. I get that this review so far is understandably sort of cryptic but I will begin to clear that up soon.
Let me go ahead and move to the wine on my Palette where it really counts. To begin with I will give confirmation to you that this wine certainly did indeed sit in French Oak for a while. French Oak is known for imparting spice into a wine and folks, there is indeed peppery spice in this wine, it is nicely done and the spice was nicely placed spice on the Palette. For those of you who are familiar with the Tempranillo varietal, the referenced spice is not that prominent nor is it to that level of deliverance. It seems to me that Arizona soil itself imparts a super note of spice in their reds in general, that's actually one of the things that I love about them. This peppery spice is on the front of the Palette and is good enough to grace the wine throughout all the way to the finish. Here is a word of advice, if you don't love spice in your reds, don't buy this wine because you will not like it. So it appears that this wine is sort of a mixed bag of poor visual presentation and a rather simple yet nice Bouquet presentation. As for my final opinion of the palette let's get that answer by digging a little further into the wine.
This wine presents itself as a bright, thin wine on the Palette. This "bright, thin" presentation is very evident on the sides of the Palette where these notes seem to display themselves for one purpose which is to throw quite a bit (too much in my opinion) of contrast to the spice.Unfortunately neither the "bright, thin" presentation, the French oak nor the Cocoa or caramel are affective or efficient in conveying any sense of darkness or depth to the wine. Another item to report and one that drags this wine down is that this wine is slightly more than moderately Acidic and displays a sort of overall harshness to it. Yes, there is are the nice notes of Cocoa and Caramel but they seem out of place here in the wine due to the way that the wine presents itself and the notes that end up dominating it. On the positive side, there are some mild yet overall enjoyable Tannins that are presented and this is another one of the aspects of the wine that attempt to help it along it's way. One last thing guys and this to me was the final blow to the wine. This is a sweet red that is not what one would consider "fruit Forward" but just......sugary and therefore of course, sweet. I think that I have said enough and that you now get the complete picture of this wine so with that it is time to head to the closing Paragraph so let's head over there and close this review out.
Well I made it, the end. I have half a bottle left and I simply can't drink any more. There are many issues with this wine and it is a terrible representation of the varietal known as Merlot as I don't think it displays any characteristics of one. If you were to tell me that this was a blend with Merlot in it I could definitely go for that but a single varietal such as a Merlot, no way. So since you have indeed read words such as "harshness", "bright" and "thin" in the body of the review, what does all that mean? Well....it means for one thing that this does not fit the characteristics of any Merlot that I have ever tasted and I doubt that you would recognize it as one either. It means that the Palette (at least mine) is....offended. If the Palette presentation kept in line with the nose (which I liked) I think we would be looking at least a presentable wine, unfortunately this is not the case. Unfortunately this wine has no depth, no darkness, nothing solid to it, no structure. When you taste the wine you can taste that there are a few positive things to
it but the harshness or "brightness" is simply too much to overcome
along the way. I hate to have to do this but on The Desert Wine Guy rating scale I am giving this wine 84 (and I am being nice) points.
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