Cloying, fruit-forward nose, a chubby, purple-hued bubble-gum bouquet cheap and supermarket-y: a crowd-friendly, “Yay-wine!” presentation I detest in a wine. Tinted with dime-store perfume and plasticine, hard-candy sweetness, it lacks any sort of depth or complexity. For a wine advertising so much BDX-component, it is difficult to grasp the lack of seriousness or even a lean towards typicity. Also: no European funk or flair, something I find equally troubling as its failure to sway even towards a Parkerized ‘California Cab’/Super Tuscan/Ribera del Duero *oak & concentration* model. This thing just plays flat-out to the Juicy-Fruit crowd. It IS only 20 bucks, but still… it feels like something knee-high at the Piggly-Wiggly for one-quarter that price-point.
Tasting it does little to redeem. A slutty entry effervescently bright-fruited and sweet thins instantly to bitter awkwardness and unresolved granular chalk. Supremely unbalanced: sharp acid and heat, cheery makeup and black density all at extreme corners of a triangle hollow and un-inviting in the middle. Watery tannins splash across the finish–the fruit an ancient memory. A forgettable wine in every way, serviceable only to bridal showers or bunco parties among the LEAST comprehending partakers.
2017 RESERVA DE LA TIERRA ‘Vega Escal’ ME/GR/Cab/Carignan/SY 27/26/25/15/7 Priorat Spain 14.5
Stephen McConnell 