Good morning and happy Tuesday. Hopefully wherever you are it is not -23 degrees Celsius with the wind-chill. If it is, well misery does love company so welcome to the party. Yes it is cold! Last night the Mrs. and I decided to do a stuffed pork tenderloin (red pepper, shallots and old cheddar) so we opened a bottle of the title wine. I have had Liberty Schools before and been unimpressed so I was a bit leery about this one. Not sure why but it always appears the LCBO is pushing this wine, either it is a good selling/margin wine or the distributor is paying good money to have it easily seen inside the shops. This wine retails out fo the vintages section at $18. All that said we went into this tasting with as much of an open mind with hope of enjoyment and wonderful flavours dancing on your tongues!
Well, hrmm, sadly those hopes were dashed, nay, crushed! This wine’s nose was rough, high alcohol and oak, little fruit. We decanted it and the colour was a dark ink while the bottle had left a sediment that had more of the consistency of mud then sand inside the bottle. After some good aeration we dove in. Right off the start you get a large acidity and berries. Strawberry as most prevalent, but fields berries (black and raspberry) were lingering. Tannins were strong especially mid mouth and the oak remained. After the first glass, I allowed the wine to decant for another 30 minutes, with the hopes the added time in contact with the air would soften this a bit more, sadly this was not the case and the wine simply remained unbalanced and un-enjoyable (if that is even a word). As a fan of Californian Cabernets and especially a few from the Paso Robles region I was less then impressed with this offering.
The Subjective CWG rating is 82 out of 100.
Mrs CWG says
“this is not smooth or enjoyable at all”
