With the Bali crew at mine. Wine was courtesy of Steffi, who has excitedly and generously volunteered a cab sauv blend from, get this: Lebanon. I’ve never ever heard of a wine from Lebanon, and this was delicious and the wine of the night. I need to do a lot more research, but This is apparently an equal blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cinsault and Carignan.

When de-corked, it showed a half-breached cork, and parts broke off into the bottle. Thankfully, the wine was safe. On the nose, it was a savory and rich raspberry, and slight smoke from the decanter. Putting aside the cork, the wine had HEAVY heavy fine sediments which I had to filter quite aggressively (based on my research, this appears to be the norm with this wine). Wine looked cloudy.

We let the wine decant for about 1.5 hours. On the nose, rich raspberry, oak, vanilla. Superb. On the palette: surprisingly delicate and light bodied wine, in spite of the cab sauv. High acidity (in spite of the age) coupled with long finish = a delicious and juicy wine. Like, I was just going nom nom nom literally. In the glass, I got an interesting light funk, and savoriness – just a touch salty. On the exhale, rich raspberry with maybe, idk, plum?

It was a remarkable different wine and super super delicious. I learned something new!

Edit: further research shows that Musar’s apparently face cork breakage quite often