92 - tasted June 2013

Description: Deep ruby in colour with medium+ intense nose

Positives: A complex wine that needs time to decant and it’s a steal at the clearance price. The wine features medium smoked oak, boysenberry, bramble fruit, tamarinds, cinnamon, sage, oregano, anise, dark cherry, spinach, tobacco leaves and arugula. Full body with high tannins, good acidity and a long length.

Negatives: Too astringent if you just open it and drink on its own.

Interesting Notes: Naturally produced with no fining or filtering. This is a good wine to give to a discerning fan of wine.

Drink now or over the next 5 years and pair it with T-bone steak, medium rare.

Tasted: 16 Feb 13

Top Pick

Score: 9+/10, Value: 9+/10 (10/10 clearance price), Total: 18+/20

Out of 5 stars, I rated this wine: 4.5

Dark ruby colour, medium body, full taste, very nice now with braised leg of lamb. Reminded me of a Barolo.

Fantastic value, especially for $7 off in vintages bin end. Very Northern Rhone in style being a Syrah heavy blend. Meaty, earthy, not as white peppery but still spicy with grippy tannin and juicy dark fruit core. Needs decanting and/or meats. A big satisfying, old world style wine.

This a a blend from the Swartland region of South Africa that is famous for its bush vines and dark soil. The bush vines can lead to lower production, smaller grapes and more intense flavors. This red is like Daniel Day Lewis in There Will be Blood. Its got amazing intensity, it brings out the greed in you, and it smells like fresh drilled earth. Take a couple of these bastards in a basket to your next lamb roast.

Incredible nose bursting with black current, black cherry and raspberry with layers of violet, white pepper and damp rich earth. The palate is equally concentrated and powerful but with a light, juicy mouth feel brought on by very fresh acidity and smooth but assertive tannins. Full bodied at 14.5% but the alcohol is well integrated. It definitely has what you might describe as "raw" purity ... Not everyone will enjoy the mouth puckering focus of this wine but you'll appreciate it's depth of aromas and flavours and great length. I'd recommend some breathing time and a slight chill to 18c or so.

This is a very fun wine.

In addition to the great overall quality, the label is unusually 'cute'; it could have been done with pencil crayon by an 8-year-old (it wraps around 3/4 of the bottle). In addition, the glass is CLEAR, so if you remove all the foil and don't decant you have a bottle that looks like it was pulled from the local 'home brew' strip-mall wine place. Love it!

I find it interesting how the professional reviewers rank this wine much higher than the amateurs. My first impression was how subtle it was. The taste grows, and my last glass is very nice. So yes, this is a sipper, and sip a lot of it. I really cannot give it more than a ninety, even though I agree with John that I could drink it all day.

The 2009 Sequillo Cellars Red is composed of Syrah, Mouvedre, Grenache, Carignan and Cinsault of unspecified proportions and was aged in French oak casks for a total of 24 months before bottling. It is a light bodied, fruity to integrated wine, with intense aromas of dark berries, rosehip, sweet cinnamon and faint liquorice. It lacks balance as it is on the acidic side and is somewhat alcoholic, without being supported by fruit. It has subtle to refined tannins (decant for 1+ hours) and has earthy/mineral finish of medium length. Drink now and for the next 2 years, as this wine was not meant to be aged (light body; composite, short cork). Though food friendly, the nice complexity would be completely masked, so I suggest to drink it as a sipper. My impression: NICE to BEAUTIFUL, 90-91 pts - though bit costly, give this one a try regardless - for lovers of light bodied wines. Aug/12.

See my wine recommendations readily available at the LCBO here:

www.GrapeSelections.com

or here @
http://www.winealign.com/wino/dantrcka/recommended-wines-you-can-still-buy

Very nice, but not a wine over 90. Not memorable.

Interesting, but nothing special about it

It seems that I didn’t tasted the same wine has everyone else base on all those 90’s scores. Curiously pale red in color for a Rhône blend and 24 months in oak, this wine opens up with aromas of red fruit (plum and raspberry), violet, licorice, spices and a slight medicinal note. On the mouthfeel, light to medium bodied (in texture) but hot alcohol and not enough fruit or tannins to give this wine any structure. This blends finish is short, unpleasant with tart and slightly bitter flavours. Everything about this wine is odd, from the color, to the clear glass bottle, the short agglomerate wine corks (you think that you would want to use a natural wine cork for a wine at this price). For me this wine tasted like an alcoholic Kool-Aid and at this price ($29.95) a robbery. Not recommended, score 78 points