This guy is a fresh addition to the Trader Joe's wine collection as of Wednesday 4/23. The label initially drew me to it (well, that and it's "hey, I've never seen you on my shelf before" quality) and its price (a delightful $6.99) and blend convinced me to buy it: Petite sirah, cab, sangovese, and petite verdot. My instincts proved correct; this is an excellent bottle. It describes it self as "plum and berry... with a long elegant finish of currant, mocha and spice." I feel thats fairly accurate, however, I get a distinct earthiness towards the finish that works just delightfully with the dark fruit flavors. I don't really find anything I'd categorize as mocha (I imagine this means chocolate and coffee, appealing to the Starbucks crowd are we?) however,
I could easily see how the dark earthy flavors I'm picking up could be interpreted in to a dark earthy chocolate and dark earthy coffee (time for a definition: when I say earthy, I mean things like dirt, wood, and the general feeling of being in an old forest.)
The sheer loveliness of this wine isn't even the best part: The price is.
For reasons that won't mean anything to you unless you work at Trader Joe's or with wine distributors, I assumed that this was a Trader Joe's private label bottle. However, just to see what happened, I googled it. I came up with this. if you're too lazy to click that, what I discovered that is that this wine is not a private label, and is in fact produced by ESO vineyards and commercially available. That's not real exciting in and of it self, but the fact that their website is charging $14 plus shipping for a wine I brought home for $6.99 certainly is.
I haven't been able to determine if this is a one time buy, or if Trader Joe's really will be carrying this for half the recommended cost, but either way, you should run out and get some.
