Wonderful Tasting Weekend

We had a great Saturday night dinner party with our friends Craig and Cheryl with homemade pasta and all the trimmings. We wanted to have one of our special collected wines and we made the decision to go with the 2002 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon from De La Montanya in Sonoma. There was a lot of yeast cells in the wine and we stood the bottle up for a few days and then decanted the wine for a couple of hours. As a prelude we started with a 2007 Stonechurch Pinot Noir from the Niagara Valley.

The Stonechurch was an excellent wine with a lot of body and structure for a Pinot Noir.  We really enjoyed the wine with its earthiness and fruit.  It was grassy enough to remind us of NZ Pinot but had that barnyard nose that Niagara is known for (and that is definitely a good thing).  At $20, if you can find it, buy it.

The main event was the De La Montanya and after a decade it was a star for sure.  Once in the glass it was all mahogany with the aging front and centre.  There was still a little debris in the glass but nothing offensive at all.  It looked like an aged wine.  On the nose it was still a bit tight with notes of dark chocolate and a bit of leather but the fruit was still there.  As we went through the bottle the fruit came out a bit more but the real shining piece was the flavour.  It was super full bodied with an awesome mouthfeel.  There was a lusciousness to this wine which revolved around solid dark plums and cassis.  So silky and elegant.  It was awesome and yet another time capsule wine.  So great.  We believe this was a $25-30 wine in 2004.  They do good work at De La Montanya.

Finally after all was said and done we opened a Rosé from Niagara's Featherstone Winery.  This was a fairly nice way to round out the meal with an off-dry Rosé which had a highly butterscotch nose and some light crisp acidity.  It was a palate cleanser for sure and would make a fantastic patio wine and at $15 once again if you can find it, buy a case. 

We didn't take the time out to score these wines per se but we can definitely give our indications.

2007 Stonechurch Pinot Noir (17.5/20 - 87.5%)
2002 De La Montanya Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (19.0/20 - 95%)
2010 Featherstone Rosé (16.5/20 - 82.5%)

As Shannon always says, 'I like Wine, Wine is good!'  This was a good wine weekend.

Keep on drinking!

Chris & Shannon