Now, on to the wine! This one has a lovely, deep purple color in the glass. The nose is absolutely lovely, with aromas of leather, oak, mint and something green that I can't quite put my finger on. The taste is just an explosion of wonderful flavors dancing around your mouth. I often talk about how flavors progress from your first taste, to midpalate to the finish, but this wine just shows a pronounced yet smooth transition through all those phases. At first I taste lovely fruit, cassis, ripe cherry and plum, which transitions to oak and leather, moving toward a fantastically earthy finish, which I honestly didn't expect. The tannins are very well structured, providing balance to the earthy flavors and a wonderfully long finish. It's still very young, and could probably be cellared for another 5 years before reaching its prime, but it's drinking beautifully now (which reminds me I have a few bottles of '07 Stags Leap Merlot around here somewhere that I should drink!).
Now for those who are familiar with Stags Leap, the wines are usually pretty pricey, but occasionally you can find a bargain as I did with this wine for only $20 on wineshopper.com. For that price, I can easily rate this wine a solid 9, and I only wish not that I'd bought more than 3 bottles! Tonight I am enjoying this with some maple bourbon glazed pork tenderloin, steamed rice and fresh green beans, and yes, this wine has every chance to overpower that meal, but I won't complain one bit!
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