Welcome to Bordeaux Columbia!

This is an old school blend but a new school wine. Quite open nose: Dark fruits, cedary-oak, vanilla, mocha, menthol. Good dark-red colour, full bodied. Well balanced, good concentration of fruit, not too much oak, fairly ripe, smooth tannin. Much more forward than an equivalent French blend. Drinking well now (give it a vigorous decanting) but will certainly improve over a few more years, probably peaking around 2013 but will likely last for some years beyond. Well done.

Various fruit aromas/flavours, finishing with a pine/cedar flavour that lingered nicely. More complex than my limited wine vocabulary is able to articulate. One of the nicest wines I have ever had. Fantastic. Tasted December 2012.

The 2006 Osoyoos Larose Le Grand Vin has a medium body with nice aromas of integrated black cherry/blackberry, prune, coffee, violets and cedar. It is tannic (decant for more than half hour) and the finish is medium to long. Even though would benefit from 1-2 years of aging, it can be drunk now and definitely can be cellared for the next 10 or so years. I find the 2006 vintage much more appealing than the 2005 one, as it is less perfumed with floral aromas and more infused with fruit flavours. My impression: BEAUTIFUL, 91 pts. Tasted Oct/10.

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The nose is meaty; full of smoke, pepper, black cherries, and well done toast. A sip builds an interesting picture for the palate. The wine’s structure is very solid, with sturdy acidity and firm tannins. The initial impression is flavours of red cherry and raspberry. In short order the red fruit flavours become dried, and are joined by earthy black coffee, dark chocolate, raw almond skin, raisins and fresh fig. This wine feels tight, the flavours seem compressed. The dried fruit flavours and figgi-ness continue throughout an incredibly long finish. This is a wine built to age, and will be quite interesting given 2-5 years in the cellar.

Big and beastly,

2nd bottle: decanting for 2 hrs really opened this up, more aroma and flavours

Couple years on and lost most of the fruit and settled into the mature Bordeaux flavours