Purchased at Trader Joe’s for $12.99

Appearance

Carries a somewhat purple-ish hue, and fades into pale pink on the meniscus.

Nose

Moderately bright with mild acidity. Dark cherry comes through heavily on the front end with a touch of sour green apple and some faint wood spice in the underlayers. The cherry fruit note is very fresh and very ripe.

Palate

Very light body with only a mild acidity. Cherry comes through as the primary tasting note, and has a small bit of tartness, but not much. It’s a very fresh drink. The only complexity in the palate comes from the finish, where the cherry becomes slightly darker and there is an uptick in the sweetness.

Score

I give it 82 points. Very pleasant and drinkable.

Got this at Trafer Joe’s for some $13 rather than going for the $10 ordinary prosecco by the same producer.

APPEARANCE

Very pale and consistent in shade all the way through.

NOSE

Crisp and acidic with the fermented funk of overripe fruit. Fresh fuji apple or some similar generic sweet red apple variety. A lighter and more sweet undertone rose up and neutralized the acidity some after a couple minutes.

PALATE

Very light and floral up front. I immediately get some flower petal, though I can’t quite say what kind. It brings to mind the image of some purple fragrant porch flower in a hanging pot. Very much a Spring drink. The middle and finish of the wine is frankly one-dimensional and somewhat watery, but that also lends a cleanliness to the experience. Better to stay flat from the beginning than go down in a bitter or astringent spiral I’d say. I am left with the floral note on my tongue afterwards and it’s quite pleasant.

FINAL THOUGHTS & RATING

I am pretty fond of this and want to put it against the Kirkland Prosecco soon to get a better idea of how they compare since I haven’t had that bottle in a while. All things considered it’s a welcomed experience on a warm day.

I rate this wine 6.5/10

(1=Sickening / 5=Average / 10=Perfect)

Price: $69.99
Proof: 107 (53.5%)
Age: believed to be 6-8 years

NOSE

After giving many swirls in a glencairn over the course of about ten minutes, I first get red fruit and a sort of cotton candy on the nose. A decent amount of ethanol, but it isn’t very punchy and it lacks any distinct youthful astringency. It has a gentle symple syrup kind of sugary nose. The red fruit comes across as plump red cherries to me.

This doesn’t seem like vanilla so much as bubblegum, specifically like Dubble Bubble. My last nosing comes with a little more of the matured brown sugar that wasn’t oresent to begin with. It has opened up a bit in the span of ten minutes or so. The ethanol is almost totally gone as well.

PALATE & FINISH

The sweet cherry red fruit comes first, but it’s a darker cherry, maybe even leaning into a cocktail cherry. It’s viscous and oily for 107 proof. Tastes more youthy than it smells, and has a decent little bit of ethanol bite on the finish. Definitely a warming drink. The warmth on my palate really lingers after the finish, but it’s actually a very pleasant.

Much of the flavor is clear barrel influence, and I am left wanting for the sweet Dubble Bubble bubblegum sugary sweetness that the nose was giving off. It would not be unfair to say that the nose is far more matured than the whiskey itself, but that’s in no way unusual. Just as with the nose, I am not getting much vanilla at all, though it is definitely there in the underlayers as I swish around. Dark cherries and oak ultimately become the finishing notes.

FINAL THOUGHTS & RATING

This is clearly somewhat young, but the proof is a boost to what Weller Special Reserve is offering. I have mixed feelings about OWA even if it weren’t for the rising MSRP on everything Buffalo Trace. Across some years of hunting and tasting bourbon, I have never seen the kind of availability that Weller, Buffalo Trace, Blanton’s, EH Taylor, Old Fitzgerald, and other bottlings now have (at least in my area).

All things considered, I rate this a 5 on the t8ke scale: Good, just fine.

There is so much decent bourbon and so much bourbon beyond mere decency nowadays. I can get a bottle of Benchmark Small Batch for about $20 and be more than happy with the whiskey inside. Happier than with this for sure. That being said, it’s a beautiful thing to see Weller Antique 107 on the shelf at an *unfortunately* ordinary price, rather than behind steel bars or in a glass case for $200.

I have been itching to look more at non-dessert wine since getting to try the 2022 Chateau Buena Vista Cabernet Sauvignon. I LOVED that wine, and have since picked up a couple bottles of the 2023 Chateau Buena Vista Cabernet only to watch its price go up after the fact.

This is my first time reaching back out in more depth with something like a cabernet sauvignon, and I was admittedly drawn to the “*NEW*” sign attached to the cases of this wine, as well as its $19.99 price point. Why not try the eight year old twenty dollar cabernet? I asked myself when deciding what to use as my first educational bottle.

I poured in my only and most reasonable wine glass then gave many a swirl before letting it sit for approximately five minutes. My notes on the appearance and nose took another five minutes before tasting.

APPEARANCE

Dark, almost blood red in the glass, with a somewhat cloudy and pinkish rim. It appears to be wholly lacking in viscosity and has no legs whatsoever.

NOSE

In candle and wax melt making the concept of “throw” is used to describe how far out a scent goes from its source and how strong it is at a distance. More throw means that the scent can be smelled stronger and from further away. This wine has moderately high throw.

At the rim of the glass I already have berries, primarily strawberry, and it isn’t very different from how I recall most glasses of Beaujolais Villages that I’ve had. At the start there is this small bit of vanilla cream in the underlayers, but a rising wood spice that pairs immediately with some amount of ethanol note coming, presumably, from the 14.5% alcohol content.

The nose changes as I swirl and sniff, and after only a couple minutes of this the berries are all but gone, and that wood spice has moved to the front.

PALATE

Bitter and astringent right away. There is fairly high acidity and frankly a general sense that those eight years were spent souring the wine rather than aging it. After the sour note peaks and trails off into a butter finish, I am left with a strange funk in my mouth that is simply displeasing. The berry notes were not present for me in the palate, perhaps because of the harshness, bitterness, and acidity that hit me in waves.

RATING

I rate this wine a 3/10.

(1 = Sickening / 5 = Average / 10 = Perfect)