If you drink big, obnoxious reds like Prisoner, Caymus and Paso Robles blends, boy do I have a wine for you here! Dark day-glo ruby in the glass, a most offensive nose emanates from it: too-ripe cherry, chili with beans, toasty caramel, butter, a squished-bug grotesqueness hung like heavy drapes across tacky stained glass. The dirtiness is candied, the fruit a too-concentrated mess: equal parts colloidal glycerin, sweaty obesity and oxidation. A more supermarket-ready, California-esque wine sure to woo wine-bro and the 99% could not be imagined.
And then you taste it. Fortunately, not as syrupy on the palate as the nose would suggest. But what it lacks in sweet concentration it more than makes up for in chemically bitterness attached to the grainy berry texture. If that’s supposed to be acid or tannin, I’ve learned everything wrong. The fruit never stops gushing its overt-Kool Aid shallowness and sluttiness, but grinds a pole of sandpaper embarrassment no amount of age or decanting will mend. Thin and vapid–despite the bellowing bouquet and cloying concentration–flawed into near-perfect New World marketing potential–a more horrible wine would be hard to imagine. My first venture into 2019 and everything is up from here. The 94 from Decanter is a nice touch.
2019 CHATEAU MAISON NOBLE ‘St Martin’ ME/Cab/CF 60/30/10 Bordeaux Superieur France 13.5
Stephen McConnell 