Costco Notes: This shows lots of spice, berry and walnut character. Currants, too. Medium to full body, tight tannins and a vibrant finish. Needs time to open, buy nicely crafted and balanced. Cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc, petit verdot (the rest cut off)
Left Coast Tasting Notes:
AVA: Napa
Time on Gas: 24 hours+
Color: When you look into this glass and see the inky dark purple, you will remember “Q”.
Nose (aromas): No nose in either the freshly opened or bottle that rested under gas.
Palate (flavors): Pulling the cork will pucker your whistle with lots of tannins. Once the wine was opened and put under gas, there is a subtle forward fruit. Time with air helps as the tannins soften, creating a complex lovely wine that lingers with a luscious in the mouth finish that is missing any hint of fruit.
Summary: Expected more from this wine once we saw it in the glass with its beautiful color and nice legs. Without a nose of any character, this missing component unfortunately influences the overall drinking experience. The wine will age an estimated 5 years. Possibly in 2 to 3 years the fruit will appear, as this wine has potential.
Rating: Based on our tasting, freshly poured with some aeration, this is a Wednesday wine. The gassed bottle, again with aeration, improved but not enough fruit to move beyond a Thursday night.
2018 James Suckling 93 points
Vivino Rating is 4.0 with 94 voting
Value: Hard to purchase this wine on an educated guess that this wine will improve over time. Right pedigree in an appropriate proportional blend, maybe a bottle at an even deeper discounted price might be the appropriate gamble to put in your cellar for a couple of years.
Grapes: 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc, 5% Petit Verdot and 5% Petite Sirah
Alcohol: 15%
Costco SKU: 767732
Price: $44.99 (Less $15.00 discount at register until 12/19/2021) $29.99
Store Location: Danville, CA
Tasting Date: 11/17/2021
Tasting Panel: M.S., M.C., C.P., A.T., B.T., M.A., W.W., C.P., C.Y., L.F., B.H.
This review is part of a series of guest posts from Left Coast Wine Bloggers, a great group of wine lovers enjoying and reviewing Costco wines they find on the West Coast. You can read more about them here, and learn more about their rating system. We hope the addition of their wine reviews will expand the geographic coverage of the blog so you can find more of the wines we feature. Cheers.
srh says
THANK you for your THOROUGH, *very* detailed review of this, & after having read it, @ even the special price (let alone Costco's regular price) I'm next to CERTAIN I'd be > satisfied with TWO bottles of the 14% ABV '19 Substance CS @ $12.99! 🤔
Mike Sorensen says
@srh,
We as a group enjoy reading and talking and finally tasting these wines in our write up. We often ask the question, is wine A at $40 twice as good as wine B at $20?
Thank you for your comments and hope you enjoy our future write ups.
Left Coast Bloggers