By cork
This is the wine Apothic Red wishes it could be. I get it, people like the big, bold and jammy with a chocolaty center—it’s a winning combination that’s been money, as in show-me-the-money—and that’s why Apothic Red is one of the hottest selling wines on the market. But, what if . . .? What if you wanted those very same qualities but didn’t want the sweeteners and additives and whatever else goes into the fining and filtering process for a mass-marketed 10-dollar hit wine? [click here to read a great blog post from celebrated wine writer Jamie Goode about wine sweeteners]
What if you wanted some human sweat equity to go into your bottle instead of some mechanized process with computerized machines pushing out the product so consistently vintage after vintage that it renders any nuance of the vintage to irrelevancy? I’m not knocking Apothic Red—it is what it is, it’s good at what it does, and I get why people like it—and any success story in wine is long term good for the industry as a whole (Two Buck Chuck included). But. What if . . . you were ready to graduate and take on higher education in the school of wine? Then you would go crazy over the 2013 The BEDROCK Heritage.
Natural beauty is bountiful in this wine—with prominent flavors of blackberry and plum and a peppery finish that doubles-down on the wine’s expressive power. Made primarily of Zinfandel and Carignane, two grapes that are never shy about wielding their prowess, but also containing 20 other grape varieties, this is as creative as a field blend gets. This is big, dense and bold, and the wine’s ripeness is full throttle but never out of control, like a pro race car driver circling the track. In the midst of all this, somehow, is incredible finesse and smooth-as-velvet texture.
Artifice and artificiality has its place in society, the radio pop charts are full of it. The real thing, though, is a natural high. –J.M.
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