I bought this wine around the holiday season mistakenly thinking it was a Greg Norman Estates wine. I was wrong tho as Norman Vineyards is completely different. I believe I paid $21 or $23 dollars at the local First Avenue Wine House here in Cedar Rapids. I generally stick to wines under $20 for “normal” drinking but it was the holidays and I’d wanted to try a Norman Estates wine. Guess I goofed.

On to the tasting! This wine has a very deep burgandy color. The initial note after pouring is a nice berry aroma. I couldn’t pick out which berries specifically. I guess I’m going to have to buy a bunch of different berries and work on identifying their aromas sometime.

The first thing I noticed about this wine upon tasting is that it is very smooth. It has kind of a mouth coating quality that is interesting but not annoying. In the mouth I could also identify pleasing berry flavors. The wine is more tannic than the other wines I’ve had recently but that is appropriate for a cab. There was a hint of chocolate. I’m a fan of dark chocolate so after noticing that in the flavor I decided to nibble on a bit of dark chocolate while drinking it. What a great combination. As the wine got a chance to breathe a note of coffee was added to the dark chocolate. Perhaps if I get another bottle of this I’ll decant it and see if that coffee note shows up earlier. I can’t quite say this wine is “complex” but it comes close. The mixture of berries, chocolate and coffee are good but not overpowering.

Did I mention how smooth this wine is? The label says it has a malty finish. I’d not have thought to call it that but the description is accurate. I like it.

After a couple weeks of thinking about reviewing wines here on offthecork.com I’m finding it somewhat difficult to rank these wines against each other. This wine is very good and I’ll probably buy some more of it but there are some more inexpensive wines out there that are more complex and interesting. Nevertheless, I’d have to give this one a thumbs up. Go try a bottle!

Check out the Normal Vineyards website at: http://www.normanvineyards.com/

$23 locally.

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