2005 Gruet Pinot Noir

This was fifteen bucks at this very odd liquor store...it's a strange place. Rather big - with the cheapest crappiest booze on one side and an incredibly interesting (though quite dusty) wine selection on the other. We've had Gruet's sparkling wines before and respected them, so this seemed to be worth a gamble.

As this wine opens you can smell cola several inches away from the glass, but when you stick your nose in a fair amount of cinnamon and clove with some earthiness comes overwhelm anything else.

Raspberry, chocolate, earth, and some really interesting tangerine zest qualities – on the back of the palate there's some interesting sassafras notes. This bottle had some extremely unpleasant, excessively potent dried spice notes (oregano and the like) – normally not a bad thing but it was strong and quite bitter. After being open for two hours, this completely blew off – so if you get a bottle of this I'd highly suggest decanting it for a few hours.

Chocolate notes, perhaps in the chocolate covered raspberry sense linger on the finish.

Wine: 7
QPR: 7