We opened our first bottle of this wine tonight, with an awesome ragu. And, for background, please recall that I found this one one a great close-out sale, and researched it and offered it, without being able to taste it first.
Thoughts:
1. This is a well-made wine, though it is quite different from a classic Sangio from Tuscany: This one is much mellower--perhaps to the point of indolence. It does not have the acidic profile that is typical--perhaps due to the heat of Wahluke Slope compared to the Etruscan clime; instead it is very mellow, structurally. It is lazy, to my mind, but laziness bred of a confident mind. It is its own drummer. I found the dominant note to be coffee, with an dark undercurrant of cherry, but the acid is so low that it comes--THIS CLOSE--to flabby. Not a bad buy at $12, though very different from "typical." Different, even, from such WA Sangios as K Vintners' (though that one costs more than this one). I prefer a Sangio that is midway between Old World and New World in style, whereas this one is definitely all New World and even then its acid is far lower than normal for this varietal.
2. If you are willing to ignore this wine's eschewing the normal "desire to please," if you are OK with a wine that says, "this is what I am, and I don't care what you think," then this is an interesting wine. I liked it with the ragu (in fact, I was fascinated by it), but Jane didn't--she is enslaved to the world of "typical Sangio." Which type of winelover are you? Are you the one who indignantly pronounces, "but this one is different, and therefore worse?" or are you willing to look deeply into swirling mists of the unknown, to try to understand the novelty there, and being made better by the exercise?
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