Black, black impenetrable black ruby, offensivly staining with a mere quarter-inch of transparency at edge. Gaseous, volatile, burning nose, green and shrubby, a wet-sawdust mash of sweltering fumes with graphite and simple black fruit buried in the vague forgettable past. The Here & Now is all about heat and strange, not-pleasant vegetal. Bell pepper and eggplant, a bitter, astringent, festering prune stew, in a 40MPH-wind on a fine-sand beach. Blistering heat, riding tall and strong on the shoulders of too-concentrated fruit and singeing every hair on your face, provides an unbalanced concoction the wine-O’clock-somewhere crowd will definitely call “Yuuuuuge”.
Heavily decanted, in hopes of appeasing the gods of Hell-fire….
In the mouth, a simple candied fruit, shallow and one-dimensional, is concentrated to tar-strength with a sweet backing of 7-Up and more ridiculously bitter density. Green, broken root, oozing a sparkling sap onto bruised earth. A middle, enjoyable in its gravitas, is pleasant for a split-second before a mouthful of green leaves attempts to convince you of serious tannin. Of course, all of this comes with ample peppery heat. This thing is 15 if it’s a DAY. More sweetness visible over this alleged structure, something the less-informed will no doubt call a ‘lingering finish’.
2010 TURNBULL Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 14.1
Stephen McConnell 