I’ve been taking a break from wine writing for the past week or so, as my health hasn’t been great and I just haven’t been in the right mood to write. Today was quite cool, however, so I decided to open up a bottle of the 2005 Woot Cellars Humbug! (A Melancholy Red). When I first bought this wine, I wasn’t very impressed with it. Even with decanting, it didn’t taste all that great and felt too hot, even at only 13.8% alcohol. However, each bottle has gotten progressively mellower throughout the year and this one seems to be the best so far.
I cracked this open right before dinner and didn’t decant it. On the nose, I smelled cool, dark fruit. I would describe it best as sour pie cherries with molasses drizzled over the top.
The taste: This wine actually has very nice fruit, tasting of those sour cherries. Maybe a little darker than pie cherries, or maybe a mix of black cherries and pie cherries. Plenty of sour, though, which I like. The mid palate was decent (no drop-outs) and it has a good long finish, which surprised me as it doesn’t have much in the way of back-end tannins. The lack of tannins make me fear for the shelf-life of this wine and I’m planning on having the rest of my case consumed by the holidays. This wine is drinking very smooth right now, although I would love some more tannins.
Dinner was pasta with pesto, tomatoes and spicy Italian sausages. The wine held up fine against this flavor onslaught. But, I had it with a carob-nut bar after dinner and it really shone. The carob brought out the sour nature of the wine very nicely, but also accentuated the sweetness, giving it an almost port-like character. Pretty darn yummy!
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