This time
I’ve got a robust, well aged, joy providing and beautiful priced red blend from
one of the most famous winemakers in Paso Robles – the French expatriate Stephan
Asseo. Today’s wine is his most reasonable, his wines can be pretty pricy,
and most basic one: Stephan
Ridge 1998.
It is a red
blend of 60% Syrah and 40% Cabernet Sauvignon. The cold maceration before
fermentation took up to 30 days and malolactic fermentation took place in 100%
in oak barrels. The aging period was 12 months in 80% new and 20% used French
oak. There wasn’t any fining or filtering. The last fact was very obvious after
I drank 3 quarters ;-)
The Stephan Ridge’s colour was, as expected, very
red-brown, not all too dark and had tons of particles in it. Hence - a very murky
and faint colour. The nose appeared to be astoundingly complex for a wine in
this price range. I sniffed a lot of freshly grounded coffee, Honduras
tobacco, black olives, a bit of tar, still some impressions of dark cherries
and very minor oak’ish scents. Its taste had a lot of fleshy and savoury dark
cherry flavours, a truckload of dark and slightly bitter chocolate, strong but
almost sophisticated flavours of mild coffee, again hints of aged Honduras
tobacco, some dark earth and a few well integrated Mediterranean herbs. The
tannin was still present, but appropriately polished – provided a robust and
smooth backbone. The concentration was very adequate, not too voluminous, and
the gentle acid still sound. The style of this wine was surely more “old-world’ish”
+ very fine Syrah-fruity, robust maybe almost a bit pithy, rather easy to access
and fantastically quaffable! A squeaky clean “Vin de Table” with a certain
amount of demand. Hard to get something that reasonable and well aged from Paso
Robles! BEWARE: A beastly lot of solid matter in the bottle ;-)!
No comments:
Post a Comment