Wine of the Week: Smashberry Red Wine
Wine: Smashberry Red Wine
Grapes: Merlot (40 percent), cabernet sauvignon (30 percent), petite sirah (30 percent)
Region: Paso Robles, Calif.
Vintage: 2012
Price: $9.99
Availability: Lee’s Discount Liquors, Total Wine
In the glass: Smashberry wine is a deeply opaque purplish-fuchsia color with a dense blackish core going out into a fine violet-red rim definition with high painted viscosity.
On the nose: This wine is a fruit bomb with a plethora of mashed red fruits including raspberries, cranberries, currants and strawberry sorbet melded with black fruits such as blueberries, mulberries and boysenberries, with hints of violets, vanilla, spice melange and underlying oak notes.
On the palate: This wine hits your olfactory senses through the mouth with an incredible red and black fruit mix, showing all sorts of crushed blackberries, jammy black currants, deep spice-laden black cherry and boysenberry sorbet, with a full-bodied underlayment, showing through the nicely balanced midpalate replete with chewy big black fruit and oak undertones. The finish is medium in this deliciously palate-pleasing wine.
Odds and ends: Coming from three grape varieties with fruit bought from the fertile Central Coast in California, this is both a successful blending job on the winemaker’s part and a testament to how creative one can get when there is so much base material to work with. The Central Coast region is vast, stretching some 250 miles from Santa Barbara County in the south to San Francisco County in the north, and averaging about 25 miles in width. Within the region’s boundaries, approximately 90,300 acres are planted to grapevines of all kinds . I predict this new brand will become a huge success if the company sticks to the formula that I have tasted in the 2011 and the 2012 vintages. Also, this bottle is perfectly priced. Drink it now through 2016 with a nicely grilled rib-eye.
Gil Lempert-Schwarz’s wine column appears Wednesdays. Write him at P.O. Box 50749, Henderson, NV 89106-0749, or email him at gil@winevegas.com.
