X Winery 2005 Red X

It has been a long time since I wrote about a specific wine. It is not that I haven't been sampling wine, but, instead, that the wine I imbibed lately has been so bad that I haven't had the inspiration to write about it. I know that bad wines deserve reviews as much as good wines (maybe even more from a public service standpoint), but that is how it is.

Last night, I opened up a little gem for the money: X Winery 2005 Red X from California. As I have written before, never purchase wine because of the bottle itself. That being said, the X Winery bottle is very pretty. The wine is a blend of the following varietals: 42% Cabernet Sauvignon, 31% Syrah, 19% Petite Sirah, 5 % Grenache, 3% Cabernet Franc.

Here is what X Winery has to say about this wine: "Explosive dark cherry and blackberry aroma. Complimented with blueberry, clover and dark chocolate with a hint a cedar. Medium body with balanced acidity and a long delicate finish."

The first thing I noticed about this wine was the color: a very pretty, inviting dark burgundy. Immediately upon tasting, I noticed the wine has a very heavy mouth feel. Although the wine is slightly more complex than I am making it out to be, basically, there are cherry notes on the front which turn to tannic-chocolate throughout the medium-length finish. While I did get some dark fruit notes, I didn't specifically get blackberry, blueberry, clover, or ceder. I most definitely disagree the wine has a "long delicate finish." For one, there is nothing "delicate" about this wine, and secondly, the finish does not linger enough to be called "long" unless "delicate" means "undetectable." I am not knocking the wine, but am simply disagreeing with someone's description of the wine. At approximately $10-12, this is a good, robust, semi-complex wine.