TN: 2010 Outpost Zinfandel Howell Mountain (USA, California, Napa Valley, Howell Mountain)

  • 2010 Outpost Zinfandel Howell Mountain - USA, California, Napa Valley, Howell Mountain (6/12/2021)
    Decanted at about 5:15, Dinner at 6:30. Followed until 11 pm. Owned since they released it. This is an astoundingly great wine. It gets ONLY a 95 because my wife and I are rating it against all wines made from all possible grapes. As a zinfandel against other zins, it’s a 98.

Dark red fruit and berries, but it is not a jammy sweet fruit. It is more a mature brooding fruit half way between sweet and tart. The real driving force here is Howell Mountain smooth pepper and dessert herbs. There is also a tiny bit of smooth chocolate in the background, but again it is bittersweet chocolate, not sugary milk chocolate, The maturity is beginning to allow tertiary flavors giving it a return to the sweet fruit of madeira, but it’s odd because it seems to exist not from oxidation or being over the hill, but from a build up of extra flavor. The color is still impenetrably dark with no evidence of bricking. (95 pts.)

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