Get The Most for Your Wine Buying Dollars

2007 Tres Sabores ¿Porqué No?

The 2007 Tres Sabores ¿Porqué No?, is their 8th vintage of this most winsome blend. It is more than just the ‘best of the rest of the cellar’ of estate wine. It makes perfect sense to blend some of her certified organic estate grown Zinfandel (dominating this bottling) with invigorating if unconventional grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot, along with some peppery Petite Sirah, if indeed it all adds up to perfectly delicious, wild, juicy party juice:  bursting at the seams with black cherry and purple plum aromas and flavors punctuated by cacao, resiny herb and green chile-like spices, with sticks of cinnamon and cardamom thrown in for good measure.

Tres Sabores is a small, family-owned ranch located on the the eastern Rutherford Benchland of California’s Napa Valley, where they grow organically certified Zinfandel, Cabernet, Petite Syrah and Petit Verdot grapes, olives, Meyer lemons and exotic pomegranate cultivars. Their single-vineyard wines include Tres Sabores estate Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc from the Farina Vineyard of Sonoma Mountain.

Julie Johnson, winemaker/proprietor of her own Tres Sabores estate, located at the foot of the Mayacamas Mountains in the prestigious Rutherford Bench AVA of Napa Valley. Original co-founder of Women for Winesense. Former president of ZAP (Zinfandel Advocates & Producers). One of Napa Valley’s pioneers of certified organic grape growing (going back 25 years to her former association with Frog’s Leap Vineyards).

The 2007 Tres Sabores ¿Porqué No? sells for around $19.99. It tastes great now, but I recommend that you lay it down for 2 to 4 years.

For more information on Tres Sabores Winery, click on this link to their website: www.tressabores.com

Click on this link to watch a YouTube video with Julie Johnson talking about Tres Sabores Winery and her wonderful wines: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FON8VQgVfA0

2006 Bogle Phantom

The 2006 Bogle Phantom is a red blend of 49% Petite Syrah, 49% Finfandel & 2% Mourvédre. Vineyard sources: Clarksburg, Lodi & Amador.

Three distinctive varietals combine lush berry and fierce spice into a wine characterized by its incandescence. Deeply luscious and succulent blackberries ignite this vintage of their rich ruby apparition. Aromas of anise and sweet fig are embraced by touches of black pepper. From the shadowed dark depths, subtle notes of cloves and vanilla emerge and compliment the concentrated fruit characters of this wine. Captured in 1, 2 and 3 year old American oak barrels, this wine showcases the best these distinct varietals have to offer.

A total of 24 months in American Oak the Phantom is a fruit forward wine with a nice long finish. It has excellent tannin structure, a pH level of 3.55, acidity level of  0.62g/100ml and an alcohol level of 14.8%.

Though this wine is remarkable now, age in the bottle will only integrate the three unique varietals more.

I recently tasted the 2006 Phantom and took three days to finish off the bottle. Decant for at least one hour if you are going to drink it this year, it really opens up the flavor after at least one hour of decanting. It was excellent on the first day, absolutely outstanding on the second day, and still very, very good on the third day.

The 2006 Bogle Phantom sells for around $15.99 but drinks like a $30.00 bottle of wine. I recommend that you lay it down for 2 to 4 years.

For more information on Bogle, visit their website at: www.boglewinery.com