Slightly murky medium ruby. Dark stagnant fruit, rich and obese, bogged down with abrasive refrigerator-crisper-drawer and a nursing-home cardboard spice slathered thick with blackberry preserves. Alcohol makes an appearance, but melds in quite well with the Napa flab.

I don’t know what this stuff costs, but it HAS to be sub-30 bucks. And if so, I suppose it would be considered a pretty good deal–by AVA standards. If I could get it for that price–or the wholesale equivalent–I could glass this thing all day long or sell END-CAPS of it. It is a seriously crowd-pleasing little sum-bish. I can see people going quite bonkers over this. I suppose I should taste it before making any final opinions or saying anything horrible, but it is getting flabbier and darker and richer by the moment right here in the glass. The odds are not in its favor.

In the mouth, the anticipated hoopla of collective cherry and berry coated plasticinely on fake structure does not disappoint. A sweet entry bows to abrasive tannins politely as they trade positions on stage around things #wineinfluencer would call “fruit”. Elegant as a fully-charged battery in the Walmart scooter and as polished as your big sister’s clear-heels at prom, this is formulaic Napa construction designed to sooth the ills of people who refuse to afford the names they know and refuse to educate and explore quality wines. There’s no serious *flaws* with this bottle, it’s just cheap wine for cheap people and if you drink a bottle of it I GUARANTEE you will have a headache tomorrow.

2015 CLIF FAMILY WINERY ‘The Climber’ Red Wine Napa Valley 14.8

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