Inky ruby with thin ambering edges.  Staining with surprisingly considerable sed.  Crazy fake mint-chocolate chip bouquet rises up from a fat glycerin-ridden base of fruit headed dangerously into prune.  Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and malt balls.  Holy crap just THINK of a confection and this personifies it.  Everything rich and over-blown and smeared heavily over a layer of *fabric store*.  Oh, you can go on and on about the leather and tobacco and minerality all you want but this is just a plain old over-extracted, manipulated sugary muss.  I know I can be a moving target on “yumminess” in wine, but this thing is just gaggingly ridiculous.  In the mouth, an intense eucalyptus and growing tannin manage to redeem it a tad.  It tastes A LOT better than it smells.  In the mouth it can easily pass off as a big bruiser of a Napa cab, concentrated and brooding, packed with the more serious versions of each of the bouquet-items.  Where we had mint chocolate chip, we have 65% cacao Andes.  Where we had Whoppers, we have dusted truffles.  Grainy, intense structural components grow directly from the generous acid evident early-on and do their part to obscure the opulent–but steroidal–fruit.  I am so torn on this bottle.  I hate the way it smells.  I love the way it tastes.  I could see it settling down into something fairly amazing.

2011 CEDAR KNOLL Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 14.2

http://www.palmazvineyards.com