TN: '95 La Cardonne

[Karena Shannon]

Picked up one of these on Bucko’s glowing recommendation and I have to admit that the Okie is dead right on this one. My notes indicate that it’s roughly 50-50 Cab/Merlot, with some Cab Franc thrown in. The wine requires a generous dose of air. Without it, it is extremely tight, with light “briar”, raspberry, and “baking rack” spice notes. Give it some air in the decanter and whooowee! The Cab didn’t make much of an appearance to my palate, but the Merlot was there with a vengeance. Big jammy fruit that just built and built on the previous aromas, coated the palate and buttressed a very healthy dollop of tannins (“searing”, Jake said). Tame this bad boy with a steak, or some stinky rich cheese, which is what we did. Is it “great”? No, but it’s pretty damn good.
We poured roughly half of it back into the bottle, to use for a red-wine reduction the next day. When we retried it, the nose was huge---no other way to describe it---it smelled like very expensive, very concentrated balsamic vinegar poured over strawberries (in a good way <G> ). It may have been committing suicide before our eyes, but it sure was leaving a beautiful corpse. Bluntly, the less than enthusiastic reviews on other boards are wrong. That or the posters have RCK12’s or Burg Hound’s cellar<G>.
At $12 a bottle, this is one huge QPR gem. (though not the QPR find of the year; that would have to be the ’95 Souverain Pinot Noir RRV Reserve, for $75/case---just forty cases left at the winery, and no, I don’t work for them either <G> )