Costco Notes: Features enticing aromas of Bing cherry, dark chocolate, clove and roasted fig. Persistent flavors of ripe raspberry, boysenberry, pomegranate and vanilla linger harmoniously, for a smooth and luscious finish.
Left Coast Tasting Notes:
AVA: Napa
Time on Gas: 24 hours+
Color: Brilliant medium ruby color.
Nose (aromas): Once the cork was pulled and the wine poured, we got pleasant blackberry, black raspberry, dried fig and dried plum. Our wine that was gassed had a very delicate nose with no appreciable fruit.
Palate (flavors): The fresh bottle exploded with blackberry, dried plum and fig, black cherry and black raspberry; a very robust but smooth wine with a hint of bell pepper on the finish. A fruit forward wine that is well balanced. Putting the wine under gas actually degraded the wine from the newly opened bottle, leading us to say this wine should be enjoyed in one sitting.
Summary: If you want an enjoyable fruit forward Zinfandel blend, this may be a good choice. It has enough character that this wine will age well over the next couple of years, but is very nice now.
Rating: We were split on our view of this wine, due to the high impact of the fruit. With some aeration of the freshly opened bottle, the wine mellowed out to a smooth finish with character deserving a Thursday night - early Friday morning wine
2018 James Suckling 93 points
Vivino 4.4 with 5,700 votes
Value: We tasted a number of Zinfandels and blends, at 30% less we would purchase again.
Grapes: 51% Zinfandel, 19% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Syrah, 12% Petite Sirah, 2% Charbono, 1% Grenache
Alcohol: 15.2%
Costco SKU: 226517
Price: $39.99
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.
