Wines of FreshDirect: An Earthy Israeli Shiraz

Posted by Eric Hazard | No Comments

Lots of interesting wood and root vegetable flavors characterize this Israeli Shiraz, which makes for a good drink now. I had to continue to remind myself this wine is only 2 years old. Even though the structure of this wine leads me to believe it has legs to cellar well, in their FYI on the wine, FreshDirect suggests drinking it now through 2009.

Winery: Dalton
Grape: Shiraz
Region: Israel
Year: 2006

Source: FreshDirect.com
Price: $24

Color: Dark red

Nose: A nose full of the scents of the Earth. Pine box, earth, cedar, pencil and root vegetable combine with leather, licorice and chocolate to form a bouquet that is woodsy and a little seductive at the same time.

Taste: Cedar and pine lead this wine into the mouth with dark spices and a slight minerality. A weighty wine in the mouth, it has a nice tannic balance, complimenting the woodsy tones of this meaty wine as it moves to more fruit mid-palate. There, the more earthy flavors yield to a nice blend of berry fruits with a taste close to beets. The exit returns to the earth, with plum and berry flavors and residual tannins.

What I like: A nicely balanced, interesting, flavorful young wine. This one has a lot to offer.

What I don’t like: The pine and cedar flavors are quite strong and tends to mask some subtle berry and vegetable flavors. With a bit of time in the cellar, this will no doubt settle down into a very nice wine.

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