CABERNET SAUVIGNON: UNITED STATES

+RUN AWAY NOW+
Blossom Hill Cabernet Sauvignon
United States of America: San Benito County, CA
Cabernet Sauvignon (red)
2008
$10.00
65 pts
Yikes, yikes and triple yikes. This Cabernet may be England's most disconcerting contribution to America since The Spice Girls. Owned by an English firm (and, in fact, one of the UK's top-selling producers, if not the leader), the Blossom Hill label seeks to capture that magical, big California fruit in a discount-priced bottle for wine enthusiasts in both the USA and the UK. The firm boasts that its Cab offers robust red berries, black currant, and subtle oak. And in using the word subtle, I think we find a wonderful example of the classic English use of understatement as a comedic device: this wine, even thinner than water itself, is absolutely tasteless. The aroma is a closed door, offering, perhaps, a whiff of Welch's Grape Juice (remember?). The attack, if it can be called that, brings watered-down Kool-Aid, and to speak plainly, there is no mid-palate, no finish, and no length. Kind of tough to comment further on things that don't exist. The only reason I'm going as high as 65 points is that despite drinking three glasses of this stuff last night in a relatively short period of time, I was not hungover this morning (65 gratitude points). This is the first wine in my experience where even after three glasses, it didn't improve one bit, in my mind (shattering my theory that every wine becomes a 90 point wine as you approach glass number four). There are some good quality wines out there for ten bucks if one looks hard and gets outside the usual varietals--and then there's a whole lot of junk. The Blossom Hill Cabernet is junk.

Chalone Vineyards Monterey County Cabernet Sauvignon (by Chalone Vineyards)
United States of America: Monterey, California
Cabernet Sauvignon (red)
2006
$18.00
88 pts
This California Cab possesses a rich and beautiful dark cherry color, with the black cherry nose to match. The taste profile is fairly complex for a wine under twenty bucks: good black fruit up front, with some pepper midway, and a hint of vanilla on the back end. But I also experienced an undercurrent throughout--strongest on the tail end of the above-average length of this wine--of an earthy, musty, mushroom taste, not something the nose offered at all. I give this one 88 points, decent because of its interest-level and complexity (and I find the fruit and pepper aspects appealing...it's not a typical Cab by any stretch), but not a MUST TRY wine, for my money, because the lingering mushroom in the end is just too much, at least for my palette. This is an interesting, unusual Cabernet Sauvignon, probably worth trying, but more for its uniqueness than its quality. I find the various aspects to be somewhat disjointed. That being said, I've had two glasses so far, and as usual, the more I drink, the better it seems!