I drank this wine the night I found out that my good friend and business partner of 11 years had been killed in a car accident. So this wine was consumed in deep sadness and melancholy with friends. And yet, we wanted to celebrate our friend's life with something good.



It's also worth divulging that we had drank a lot of wine that night, including these gems:



So, I deliberately kept some and re-tasted it the next day to be fair to this wine (and this review).

My god, this was an insanely deep and cold wine. If I drank this blind, I believe I would have had a hard time guessing that this was a Pinot Noir -- and I drink a lot of Pinot. It reminded me more of a really good and old Bordeaux. It totally had that cold dark lake thing going on -- cold, smooth, and deep in the feeling you get from it. I guess it's hard to explain, but that's what Denise and I call it. Normally we only get this with 10+ year old Bordeaux, yet this had it too. Interesting.

The nose was just dank, with pepper, blueberry, ocean, plum, and salty deep ocean smells. And later: burnt with olive oil and roasted red pepper. And then: musty and mushroom.

The taste was like tar (but I mean that in a good way, if you can imagine that). It had almost a saltiness to it, but again, I don't mean to say it was bad -- that's just the best way I can describe it. And then, it evolved into a dark chocolate taste. Yum. Later still, the taste changed to a raspberry with salt, along with dirt and blackberry.

The finish was very smooth. Not necessarily that velvet hammer Pinot thing, but smooth like an old Bordeaux. I know I keep going back to that, but that's what it was like. The berry flavors faded into Pepper and a little cayenne. And then leather. And then a little black cherry at the very end. Yes, this had a long finish.

This was an incredible and memorable wine. I would imagine that this bottle, especially the vintage is hard to come by. But if you do, or if you have one, I would bet this could cellar for another few years, at least. This was surprising to me to see a 2003 Pinot with such depth as 2003 was hot and usually they peaked a bit early with all that ripe fruit. But apparently not this one. This was a very fitting tribute to my friend.

Cost:   

Rating:   9.0