Castle Rock Pinot Noir 2015

There are often definitive moments when you taste a particular wine that will resonate beyond reason. Perhaps it was on the wine list out on a date where you draw the first stamp of nostalgia, or maybe in celebration of a peculiar milestone that not many people would constrain as joy. Regardless of the causation the inevitable imprint of a good wine will last a lifetime — lodged forever somewhere between your olfactory bulb and amygdala.

This is the case for Castle Rock Pinot. All those years ago when we met I blundered. I notched my first scar in making assumptions of my partner — we were in our early twenties — and what young female wouldn’t have an aversion to vodka cruisers and midori splices? Or so I thought. I’d served it up more clueless than a boys’ private school graduate never thinking to offer the wine. Later she diplomatically asked if there was anything else to drink.

So this bottle was cracked. It was a 2007 — a ripe, musky thing of a wine hallmarking a maker of memories. Like how people have their song, this is our wine.

Liquorice all sorts on the nose stuffed with lots of blackberry and spice. Very fruit forward on the palate, good weight as fruit inertia spills over to fill out the palate which I suppose adds the the allure to this series. Ending comes off a little wobbly, there is warmth from alcohol that interferes with the length almost fraying the edges of an otherwise seamless wine.

“Colour 3 / 3
Aroma 6.8 / 7
Taste 8.4 / 10
Overall 18.2 / 20”