Château Meyney St. Estèphe 2009 Bordeaux, $38.24-$44.99, 93 points, reveals a very dense ruby, black currant-elderberry color welling opaque and transparent at the edge of the glass.
The aroma is more a bouquet of sweet blackberry, black currant, coffee, cocoa, earth, and just a hint of sandalwood.
With a pleasantly edgy near full body, this Bordeaux carries good acidity, and firm lasting tannin.
Black fruit highlight this wine, but subtle hints of pomegranate, plum, licorice, and a hint of mocha tie together the bow of the flavor package.
Finishing with the trailing palate and adding spice to the trim alongside an almost imperceptible heat (14.5% alcohol), caps-off Château Meyney's excellently balanced dry red wine.
Varietals are 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, and 15% Petit Verdot.
This is not a soft Merlot kind of wine for those who want to drink an alcohol spiked grape juice; this is an intense and complex wine experience which will be just too much for some of those California Merlot addicts (not meant to be derogatory). It would be like a person who has never ridden a horse before, and mounting a race horse; not impossible, but they just might get the thrill of their life.
I've been told that a good wine review is fifty words or less, but this is a blog post, and when a wine needs more time (This one does) and more space, then I'll give it the space (Belmont Stakes 1.5-mile-2.4 km)!
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I bet this wine will age great...seems a shame to drink it so young.
ReplyDeletev-girl, no shame, someone had to taste this wine, but I got two, one for the cellar!
DeleteHi Dennis,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the links. Your review of Château Meyney is very compelling, as are all of your reviews. You have lots of talent for writing wine reviews and reading through your vast tasting notes makes it obvious that your olfactory senses and palate are refined as well.
Also it's really nice to see you express yourself with something other than California wines, which are fine, but limiting. The wine wall is huge and there are so many great discoveries to be made out there that, considering your skills, it would be a sad if you missed other possibilities. Your nearly encyclopedic experience with affordable California wines is great but please let me encourage you to continue exploring the classics: Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Rhone, Loire, Alsace, Piemonte, Brunello, Mosel, Rioja, and such. Although it’s likely that you will find wine from these regions to be more expensive than their west coast counterparts, these are considered ground zero for wine knowledge. If you later go back to California, it is then a matter of personal taste and should be respected by all, but at least you will have rounded out your base of knowledge. Please keep going with this trajectory.
As for Vinogirl’s comment about Château Meyney’s aging potential, maybe it will add to the expressiveness of the wine with bottle age but the biggest challenge I see for the ’09 and ’10 Bordeaux vintages will be to not drink them young. They are so approachable and delicious now that I’m sure many of them will be enjoyed well before they are able to develop the classic Bordeaux secondary and tertiary flavor and aroma profiles. Even doing hundreds of barrel tastings from these vintages in Bordeaux was a sheer pleasure and normally that’s not the case with such young unfinished wine. As you said, there’s certainly ‘no shame’.
I hope your holiday season is wonderful!
Best regards,
David Boyer
classof1855.com
Thanks David, your encouragement has been a mainstay of my continued blogging effort, but has been enormously rewarding, and keeping in mind your recommendations will be rewarding as well.
DeleteI'm glad to hear from you and wish you and yours the best as well.
Sincerely,
Dennis