The
other day, Mrs. Desert Wine Girl and I decided to take the kids and
some of their friends to spend the day at the mall in Orlando
which is about an hour & a half from us. Aside from being an 80's
mall rat and loving to hang out there, I also decided to go into
Williams Sonoma. I have always liked the store even though they are a
bit overpriced but this time I decided that I needed (okay, wanted) a
new wine glass and if I came across one that I loved, no matter what the
price was (within reason of course), I was going to buy one. This
particular day they were giving away some espresso samples from some
awesome machines they sold and while the espresso was great, buying the
machine would have drained the bank account so off to the wine glass
section I went :) I ended up coming across a beautiful (I do mean
beautiful) wine glass that cost $30 a piece and one of them was going to
be mine for sure, it was coming home with me. 
Well, I bought the glass and
was walking around the beautiful mall when the bag decided it needed to
meet a handrail. Yeah, the glass broke, shattered actually as it was a
beautiful crystal. I was devastated! I immediately thought, I have
nothing to lose and that I would go back to the store and see what they can
do for me so that is what I did. I ended up speaking to Sierra and I
explained to her that it was completely my fault that the glass broke
and that I was totally upset. I asked her if was there something she
could do. Immediately and without hesitation Sierra told me not to worry and
she went to the shelf and came back with another glass, wrapped it up
and placed it into a box with a smile. I was impressed guys to say the
least. I just wanted you guys to know this in case you are looking for
some kitchen (or wine) stuff and are concerned about Customer Service.
Now, it is time to drink some wine from my new glass so let's get into
that.
Today I am taking a look at the 2018 Stags Leap, Petite Sirah. I paid
$30 for the wine on sale at an on line site and I have to admit, I am
pretty excited to try it. The wine was rated at 93 points from a big
time wine reviewer and was aged for
14 months in American Oak barrels with 25% being new. The wine is 95%
Petite Sirah along with "small amounts of Syrah, Grenache and other
mixed Rhone varietals". The wine also comes in at 14.4% alcohol and the
bottle is cork sealed. The grapes for the wine came from the Calistoga, St. Helena and southern vineyards in Oakville, Oak Knoll as well as he Coombsville AVA's.
Label wise I have always thought of the Stags Leap winery as producing
excellent wine and relate their labels with that feeling as well. I
think that at times a fancy label is nice but at other times, the
simplicity of a label as in this case, is all that is need to set the
bottle off.
On the nose now, I am picking up a note of light rhubarb which I find
rather strange but at the same time, rather nice as well. Black cherry
& raspberry are here and they smell very nice. A sense of spice is
here as well and while it isn't screaming in your face, it smells
delicious. That raspberry is actually really showing itself off nicely
and leading me to believe it may lead the palate off as well.
As for the palate, I get notes of a semi-juicy blackberry that are
slightly unripe as they seem to lack just a hair bit of juiciness... of freshness. Aside from that, this is a dry wine guys, like for sure. When I say
dry here, that is truly what I mean, dry. When you take your first sip of the
wine I think that will be the very first thing you pick up. This driness takes
over the whole palate and in this particular case, this is one of the things telling me (a feeling) that the
wine is not quite ready to be enjoyed just yet. There is also a slight pucker
effect to the wine for sure and I enjoyed that aspect of it. There is
also a semi dark type spice to the wine that is very nice as I certainly
do love that note in my red wines. There is a green type note here as well,
almost a sort of vegetative note, and it is also another thing hinting at the fact that the wine is
that is not ready for prime time as it just seems a bit off right now. Tannins are grippy but also
intermix some dustiness as well. Oak can't be missed here although it is
well integrated with everything else the wine is throwing out. When you
first take a sip of the wine aside from the driness, you get a bit of a
cocoa note and even though it doesn't last too long, it is sufficient to
influence the wine in a positively yet delicious direction. That Raspberry I
picked up on the nose makes its presence know here and doesn't seem to
fade much throughout the tasting, this is a good thing. Black plum is here as
well and it appears to be pretty juicy but not in an overly crazy way
as it is able to maintain itself rather nicely. Acidity here is on the
lighter side but it works well and there is no need for the note to be
any stronger. For those of you who love a higher acid wine, or believe a
wine needs to be high in acidity to be good, I promise you that having tasted acidity in this wine, it
is not needed as it is not on the high side. So there is mt review. Let's get to the conclusion section and wrap it all up.
I have to say guys that when I took the first few sips, I wasn't a
big lover of this wine as it hadn't yet had a chance to open up at all.
As the wine was exposed to air however, it did come into its own very nicely. Decant!
I highly recommend that you decant the wine for about an hour guys and I think you will be
impressed with what it has to offer up. This is a very tightly wrapped
wine and wine that in reality really needs a couple of more years to fully be able to
express what it (hopefully) will. While the wine is certainly drinkable
right now, a couple of more years of aging I think will enable it to come out of its
shell. On The Desert Wine Guy rating scale, I am putting this wine at 93
points which is just shy of the 94 required to make my wine cellar.
There is just something holding this wine back from that 94 that I can't
quite put my finger on but it is lacking just a bit. Now guys, this is
not to say the wine is bad because it isn't, in fact, it is pretty nice.
Is it possible the wine will develop in the bottle and become a 94
point wine? Yeah, I think it is a possibility but right here, right now
it is at 93 points.
The Desert Wine Guy
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