At the Ohana NYE countdown party.

This is another repeat drink. Funny enough: this was the one that kickstarted a buying frenzy into the Chateau across multiple vintages. Unfortunately, we haven’t had much success in other vintages, including the poor 2012, and the oddly disappointing 100 pointer 2010. In fact, some of us were starting to wonder if we had mis-judged the 2014, and that it wasn’t never that good to begin with.

NOPE. The 2014 IS excellent.

Decanted for ~1.5-2 hours.

In the glass: this was a DEEP dark highly concentrated ruby core with slight dark garnet rim. Small meniscus.

On the nose: the first thing that stood out was an intense blueberry and blackcurrant. Soft vanilla, mild cedar in the background.
On the palate: notable tannins that was quite fine grained, but becomes resolved on back of the tongue after swallowing. High acidity.

This wine needs a lot of air – target 2-3 hours of decanting: with time, notes of cedar wood and eucalyptus emerged to share the stage with the dark fruits to become very well balanced.

Sucha impressive thing. This wine is still so very very young – with time, it will most certainly shed some of its generous fruits to develop more complexity. I cannot wait.