Sketchbook Cabernet Sauvignon (5)

Sketchbook Cabernet Sauvignon 5-Pack - 90pts. Wine Enthusiast
Sold by: Mendocino Wine Group LLC
$56.99 $124.00 54% off List Price
2013 Sketchbook Cabernet Sauvignon, Mendocino County

This 2013 Sketchbook Cabernet Sauvignon is plush, dark in color, and wonderfully extracted producing a nose of black currant and red pepper flake with flavors of dark black berry and sandalwood.

Our Sketchbook 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon received a 90 POINT SCORE from the Wine Enthusiast!!!

Cooperage for this wine:
Aged for 20 months:
15% New French Oak
85% Neutral Oak & Redwood Tank

Residual Sugar:
0.05g/100ml

First time ratter here… Just returned from a long hike and wanted to share some late notes:

I prefer mostly reds, particularly cabernet sauvignon and pinot noir. I tend to enjoy fuller, fruit forward cabs with dark fruit flavors and nice drying tannins. That said, this wine was a very good match for my preferences.

Deep ruby-red in color. A nice nose, moderate aromas of fresh raspberries and blackberries. Well balanced, flavorful, not overly oaked, with lower levels of soft tannins, and a pleasant black fruit finish of about 4-5 seconds. Tasty!

Seeing Wine.Woot’s price, I would say this is a solid QPR. I think it would stand up to a nice meal, but could also make for a good pizza wine. While it’s not necessarily something that would have me saying to my friends “You have to try this!”, overall it is a solid, easy-drinking table wine.

Uncommon to see redwood tank aging in this day and age - if you’ve never tasted a wine aged in redwood, it might be worthwhile to pick this up for that alone - though I don’t know whether the wine has the characteristic flavor of redwood aging. It went out of favor for a reason… but a tiny touch can be nice.

Otherwise, this looks to be other than my flavor profile: very ripe fruit, high alcohol, low pH. A wine for more or less current drinking, not for aging. Rather different from the 1977 Inglenook Cask Cabernet we had last night.

Nice to see winery participation, esp. on a Sunday! Unfortunately I have spent any extra $ on last min. “must haves” for my daughter who is First year in College…

Funny, I used the very same excuse (just dropped my first daughter off at first year of college) as my justification for purchasing this wine. It’ll probably need some fortifying for me to forget how old I have become.

All tasting notes for this wine have been cross posted into CT under user name wine.woot_taster. User names have been removed to protect the guilty. PM me if you want your tasting note removed or user name added back.

Thanks and back to the wineing.