Today's Topic

Joseph Phelps Vineyards

Tasted 3 wines from this vineyard from Napa Valley, California yesterday at a tasting, and was hooked on their style from the first sip. The first wine I tasted was their 2005 Sauvignon Blanc, a clean and crisp white wine, with a bit of oak in the nose, though very fresh and flowery, and the oak notes didn't overpower anything in the taste, a very mineral yet fruity and beautiful Sauvignon Blanc with a nice acidity, where the keyword is clean.

The 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon was overpowering, the nose was very very sweet, and filled with prunes, the same can be said about the taste, dark too ripe fruits, prunes, very ripe figs and almost no acid, and a lot of tannins of course, a very concentrated wine, hard to drink due to the lack of acidity. The lack of acidity was explained by they had a very hot summer in Napa Valley in 2004, so the grapes were too exposed to the sun.

Last but not least I tasted the vineyard's top wine Insignia, again a wine based on Cabernet Sauvignon and again a very very concentrated wine with a sweet, but very refined nose. The taste is overpowering, very sweet, with ripe black berries, some spice and a hint of vanilla notes, the wine doesn't have much acidity, though it is still very harmonic in the mouth and you don't miss the acid. The wine seems more like a dessert wine than a red wine, and if I had to pair it with food, it will be to dark chocolate, prunes, black berries and vanilla.