This is a ridiculously pedestrian wine, and I don’t have much reference on it because I don’t drink a whole lot of waist-hi-and-down supermarket pedestrian wines. I drink–errrr TASTE–a lot of blingy, expensive bad wines, but few of the myriad available for less-than-evolved palates. But this is boring on levels hard to explain. The nose has a bit of poopy funk in it, which–with pinot or maybe gamay or even Sangio–I would be standing up and cheering, but whith this blend: it’s going to fall under varietally incorrect. I’ve never had a Craggy Range red, and I DO love an inexpensive claret, but can’t get behind this one.

Vapid and un-defined on the tongue, a harsh bit of acidity and dryness grinds interest to a halt–especially in the face of completely lackluster fruit basically never appearing. In its defense: it is not flabby saccharin-infused, neither are oak of other fake flavors injected into it. It just flat-out doesn’t have any redeeming factors anywhere start-to-finish. I had my hopes up: at $20 and all kinds of glorious verbiage on the label describing its source, it was worth the experiment. But no. Nothing compelling whatsoever ANYWHERE. And at 5, one would think it would be at cheap-claret-peak. It hasn’t gotten any better and isn’t going to. Milquetoast and awful in finish, redemption never arrives.

2018 CRAGGY RANGE ‘Te Kahu’ ME/Cab/Bec/CF/PV 53/29/10/6/2 Gimblett Gravels Vyd Hawkes Bay NZ 13.0

https://craggyrange.com/