For those of you who don’t know, I’m currently training to be a Wine Manager at one of the Total Wine locations in Charlotte, NC.  Training is happening in Tampa, FL, and I’m there for a total of four weeks with three other trainees.  One night after work, we decided to each bring a bottle of wine that we were curious about, and we opened them up, ordered a pizza, and tasted through our themeless flight.

Here’s a collection of my tweet-length reviews from that night:

2007 Edgewood Cabernet Sauvignon - $18
blackberry, cassis, sweet cigar smoke, touch of earth

2005 Accordini Amarone Classico - $50
baguette crust, black peppercorns, dried cherry

2009 Château Arnauton Fronsac - $25
strawberry Twizzlers, silt, cherry brandy

2008 Hugh Hamilton Jekyll & Hyde Shiraz/Viognier - $40
blueberry central, dense velvet, grape Blowpop 

The Amarone & the Shiraz were probably my favorites, but every single one of those bottles was super tasty.

—a

Region: Barsac, Bordeaux, France

Price: $24.99 at Total Wine

Sight: Versailles gold

Smell: butterscotch, apricot, guava, almond

Taste: sweet, apricot, honey, butterscotch candy, orange, almond

Overall: Glorious.  This dessert wine has a perfume of sweet apricots and buttery almonds.  The texture of the wine is like a luxurious blanket over the palate, and the apricot notes are amplified all the way to the nutty almond finish.  A hit of orange lightly strikes the glands, bringing in some acidity to balance out the filled-out honey sweetness.  The core of the flavor of this entire experience is something like butterscotch candy.  I bought this for my dad for Father’s Day, and when he tasted it, he said, “It’s my grandmother’s house!” and I said, “…What?”  and he said, “Butterscotch candies!”  Something about this wine brought back the memory of his grandmother’s ever-present bowl of Brach’s butterscotch hard candies.  And that’s why wine is so awesome.  It really can take you anywhere.

Region:  Haut-Médoc, Bordeaux, France

Blend:  I don’t exactly know, but its left-bank Bordeaux status makes it mainly Cabernet Sauvignon.

Price: $15.99 at Total Wine

Sight: very dark cranberry hue

Smell:  dark fruit, earthy, mineral

Taste:  mouthwatering blackberry, currant, dense, mineral, gorgeous finish

Overall:  The flavor of this wine is so much bigger than its aroma.  The bouquet is like a good movie trailer—it gives you a good idea of what the main attraction is going to entail, but it saves the best moments of intensity for the eventual experience itself.  From the nose of this wine, I had a pretty good idea I was in for some dark fruit flavors, but when I tasted it… that is a lot of fruit.  It’s got enough acidity to make your mouth water, and on contact your palate is instantly coated with these viscous, indulgent berries.  Some serious, loamy earthiness frames the piece, as well as something like cut rock, balancing out the fruit with deep, mineral tones.  The tannins have what I like to call a nice, firm handshake—not limp, but also not trying to crush you.  The lightly spiced finish extends languidly, like it’s got nothing better to do than to wait around for you to take the next sip.  This wine is one of the most accessible Bordeaux wines I’ve ever tasted.  If you like your California reds but you’ve been kind of afraid of France, start here.  This wine is ready now through the next five years, and will treat you well.

Additional Note:  The bottle I have is signed by the winemaker, Vincent Fabre, who traveled all the way from Bordeaux to visit us at Total Wine in Charlotte.  He was such a nice guy, and he even helped us wash dishes from a tasting he did for a class of about 50 people.  A good bit of his delicious portfolio is available at any Total Wine location.  Check it out!