Vibrant purple.  A veritable oil-slick of glycerin, chemicals and oak.  Huge jammy flat oxidized and miserably obese, a fake Jolly Roger shaved-ice bullshit creepy blackberry juice-box capri-sun Hawaiian Punch unpalatable miserable Aunt-Jemima syrup glow gags your nose.

Who could even drink this fucking bullshit?  It’s a beautiful label, and I know the Daou’s do not do anything without careful consideration.  That’s the scary part.  They did a careful consideration of a certain market and produced THIS dretch to satisfy it.  It is not so much that this is horrid tourist bullshit, but that careful planning and winemaking went into making it for a very serious wine-drinking portion of the population.  And not the bottom shelves either!  The price-point on this wine puts it smack in the middle of alleged *thinking-man’s* territory on the shelf.  And not poor people.  Absolutely undrinkable for anyone with a 3-digit IQ: gaudy oak and heady extraction continuously flows off the nose and nearly prohibits the mouth from getting close.  But I have to taste it. Fat, flat and still, how can you even be curious?

In the mouth, super-sweet shallow fruit–deep and rich but one-dimensional–candied oak leaves with additional bitterness added from some source.  Chalky and awkward–but not in a way which would inspire complexity or imagination.  Porty and oxidized.  An absolute complete textbook Paso tourist bullshit wine.  This is classic #womenwholovewine maxi-skirt shorty-denim-jacket ray-ban-aviator small-dog wine YAY!!! *smile emoticon* and Daou is laughing all the way to the bank.

2013 DAOU Pessimist Red Blend Paso Robles 15.2

www.daouvineyards.com