It's Good!

Tonight, with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, Molly and I popped the first cork on our Lot 06 PANTHOS, which we bottled just four weeks ago.

We knew it was a bit too early to be past bottle shock, but we couldn’t resist, considering we are about to spend thousands of dollars on new labels and the wine better be good before we go through with that.

So with two perfectly-grilled New York steaks in front of us, we gave it a go…

We were very pleasantly surprised at how the wine evolved over the course of about an hour, developing nice aromas, starting with little more than subtle toasted French oak, then building layers of cherry, bacon, roasted coffee and floral herbs.

The deep burgundy wine is already showing flavors of raspberry/blackberry chocolate ganache – one made with Scharffen Berger rather than Hershey’s. Espresso coffee, most likely from the La Roza Vineyard Syrah, was obvious on the mid-palate.

There is still some bitterness from the tannins and SO2, which should attenuate and integrate as we go further out from bottling.

Overall, we were very pleased with our first effort, which is not an over-the-top fruit bomb, but rather elegantly full-bodied. This will go well with food – and went very well with our steaks!