Sunday, October 5, 2008

d'Arenberg The Coppermine Road 2005

I was away for a few days, so I have to do this review by proxy; Kelly had this with Kathy and Ted. Maybe that's just as well, as I'm beginning to think that I'm not really a cab person. I'm also bending the blog rule about discussing only wines bought through ANBL. While the 2005 Coopermine Road isn't available here, the 2004 is. As both rated the same from Wine Spectator I thought a review of the '05 might be helpful.

That gets us to the Wine Spectator rating - 83 for both the '04 and '05. All three of the tasters agreed that "there's no way in the world that this is an 83."

All agreed that it had good cab character and a very good mouthfeel, but perhaps a bit of a harsh finish. Here's Kelly's note (blind tasted and scored as usual for her): "Blackberries, cedar, raspberries, leather, pepper, green olives on the nose follow through on palate. Firm tannins, longish. Not a fruit-driven wine, although there are some nice fruit flavours here. This is a nicely structured wine and the best cab I've had in some time."

It's almost certainly too young; time should smooth out the tannins and give it more complexity. But for now the score is a 90. (Note that Kelly liked this quiet a bit better than the Stefani even though she only scored them 1 point different - we're running into the problem of score compression in this area of the scale.) Right now it's not a great value, but it will be good value if it develops as anticipated.

Price: $52.29
Value: 3/5
Score: 90
Tasted: Oct 2008
ANBL UPC: 9311832317008

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