Sunday, September 21, 2008

2003 Adelsheim TF Willamette Valley

What's TF? Tocai Friulano. A varietal from northeastern Italy which the folks at Adelsheim fell in love with on a visit to the region. It's an oddball one to be sure. I discovered this in the fridge and cringed a bit at the 2003 date, but here goes. The 2006 of this sells from the winery for $22 – my cost for the 2003, on clearance no doubt due to the age, $6.

Interesting nose – lavender comes through strongly with some tropical fruit – lychee?

Oddly viscous – this is an interestingly “heavy” wine. Dry with a fair amount of acid and still some fruit – this is showing better than I expected. Lots of pineapple, quite a bit of lime, some nice minerality and loads of spiced tropical fruit – unripe canned and spiced things like guava and papaya are here (I must mention I unripe spiced papaya, though interesting, isn't something I'd seek out).

The lime sticks around for a while.

So here's where ratings are flawed – I find this wine quite interesting though not particularly delicious...a simple wine with this profile would be below five but how can I bash a wine this interesting and well made? Let me introduce you to the asterisk.

This wines ratings get asterisks on both fronts. The QPR asterisk is because I have no choice but to judge that based on what I paid for this particular vintage. The wine rating is adjusted for interest – I don't find this wine to be tasty, but it's more than interesting and its flaws may be due to age.

Wine: 7*
QPR: 7*

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