Don's Gillette's Weekly Wine Blog
Weekly musings from our store's resident wine guru
Don has over thirty years experience in the wine industry. For the last eighteen years his attention has been focused on the growing local industry. Don has a large following of customers who search out his opinions (never in short supply!) on new releases and on what's currently most distinctive on our shelves. Others seek his insights on wineries and trends that are still under the radar. Check back here each week for Don's latest thoughts on various wine-related topics. Read Don's full bio...
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Calibrating Carter Reds
Grand Cru Bordeaux and the best Napa Cabernets are expensive toys and some clearly cost too much, but truly great wines can make you forget what you paid.
I have frequently asserted that Carter's 2002 Tokalon Cab is the wine of its vintage until proven otherwise, and the Wine Spectator now seems ready to accept that possibility. The Spectator also loved Carter's 2004 Truchard Merlot, I agreed, and I think the 2005 Merlot is even better.
I felt that Carter's 2004 Coliseum Cab was quite possibly the wine of its vintage, and I firmly believe that the 2005 Coliseum is likely to prove even better. Carter's 2005 Tokalon Cab may also prove to be spectacular, although this vineyard always wants cellaring to fully reveal itself.
The three wines, now on the shelves, are each distinctive, yet all share a sense of scale and intensity that elevates them above the crowd.
Carter's 2005 Merlot offers the sweet ripeness of a perfect vintage, layered over a muscular structure that reminds of a great Duckhorn Three Palms. The wines most distinctive characteristic is its wonderful interplay of vivid red plum-cherry-currant-red raspberry fruit and mocha-leather-vanilla-tobacconist-shop spice notes.
The Tokalon Cab is coiled power. It is fleshy, focused and concentrated, with perfectly integrated oak, although the mouth-feel is tightened by typical "big year" Oakville firmness and minerality. Happily, the powerful structure puts no damper on the wines pervasive wild cherry and red currant fruit. This is a vineyard with a hundred-year history of worthiness and age-ability, but the stuff does take its time.
The Coliseum Cab is a younger vineyard, and it produces a more "modern" bottling, darkly fruity, massively palate-coating and at its best when it stays this side of over-ripeness. In vintages where it crosses that line, it can loose clarity and structure and varietal accuracy. The new 2005 Is massive, spectacularly ripe, perfectly focused and covers its tannins in a bath of deep cherry, plum and red rose flavors than dominate from start to finish its extravagant savory complexities.
These wines are certainly expensive, but these prices are an obstacle to the consumer, not an affront.