It was wax sealed and after chiseling away at the closure the cork began to crumble on extraction. I switched to an Ah-Soh and the cork came out in one piece. The wine, a blend of Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon, was quite dark in the glass and very aromatic with blasts of fresh oak, vanilla, and cinnamon sitting on top of potent, dark fruit. With lots of swirling the fruit aromas finally turned to black raspberries and dark cherries with some chocolate hints. There was certainly nothing shy about the wine.
The taste was where the surprise came. There was an unabashed saltiness to the front of this wine. The initial taste was dark chocolate with seas salt which is such a popular taste in fine chocolates lately. When the dark cherries joined the mix this was like eating a dry, chocolate covered cherry with salt crystals on top. The flavors were deep and strong and the tannins were busy. The finish was very long and had some good tartness to it to keep the wine from being too jammy. It pushed to the edge of being too big, but never got there. There was enough restraint in this wine that it never went over the top with jammy flavors.
This was a much better wine than I remember it being when it was released. My notes tell me the other two bottles were consumed within a year of issue, the last being in the spring of 2011. I should have waited longer on the other two because this one was totally enjoyable. This wine was more remarkable in that I opened a 2008 vintage of the same wine a few moths ago and with that wine the fruit had faded leaving a primary taste of oak and the length to the finish was very brief.
Dinner was two grilled lamb chops and some oven roasted butternut squash.
2007 La Vigna Proprietary Red Wine. 13.9% alcohol and $22.
The photo is a block of Himalayan rock salt. Winery link here.
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