Giddy Up!

Each year during the Holiday season I am fortunate enough to receive gifts from people in the wine business. You can probably guess what people in the wine business give to people who own wine stores. Yep wine. I am very easy to shop for because even though I work among thousands of bottles of wine, on a daily basis, I still get excited every time someone gives me a bottle to try. Whether it is a gift or another sales sample I have yet to get tired of trying new wines. While sampling a cabernet from this years bounty I believe I came up with a new wine description (at least in my limited wine vocabulary) Cowboy Wine.

The "Old West" wine in question is: J. Lohr 2006 Hilltop Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon. J. Lohr's website describes this particular vintage as toasty vanilla oak with black cherry and current. The grapes picked from their Paso Robles vineyard just as they developed a doughy berry pie flavor. The description is mouth watering and my personal review was very similar to the wineries.

My words to my wife as I took my third sip of this delicious cabernet were, "Lots of black cherry and coffee. Big tannins, honey do you know what this wine is? This is cowboy wine!" She looked at me and rather than mocking my silly new wine term agreed instantly. "Yes this is a cowboy cabernet," she replied, "you hit it right on the head." As much as we enjoyed the glass we stopped at one and saved the second half of the bottle for the next evening. On night two the wine settled a bit, still showing its cherry flavors but in a more elegant fashion. The coffee had faded and tannins calmed, it lost its cowboyness and tasted like a different more laid back cabernet. Fresh or decanted this wine is delicious, when trying a bottle I suggest giving it some time to taste the evolution from old west to big city.