Once again I had the chance to try two more Californian wines last night. Thank you goes out to the friends that invited me over for dinner and lively discussion. I brought the 2006 J Lohr Cab Sauv as mentioned in the title and as well a 2006 Sterling Vintners Collection. Both wine are available at the LCBO and are in the low price range, LCBO links appear below. I am once again amazed at the lack of real selection I have found down here. Yuma is literally on the border of California and has a good size population (about 197k in the county) that doubles during the winter with snowbirds. You would expect an area of this size and proximity to large production state to have a better selection… Anyways, enough griping, what did I think? On to the tastings!
These are abbreviated tastings as I did not embarrass myself by taking notes. The Sterling Vintners was less then stellar. I know that it is Sterling’s low end Cab Sauv but still I got little out of this wine. Weak body, heavy cherry fruit with little else to compliment it, and while even from start to finish I would not call a young Cabernet Sauvignon this light complete. Overall it was just plain pedestrian. The J. Lohr Seven Oaks on the other hand was a solid offering. Nicely balanced wine, a tad young and tannin heavy, which is to be expected for a 2006. Good fruit with cherry and cassis being prevalent, it also had a good spicy nose. Oak was even and not too dominant. Generally this would be a good wine with the traditional hearty meals, but if you were to decant it for a good 30 minutes+ you would probably get a wine that will be soft enough to sip by the fire while reading a book.
The CWG Subjective ratings go as follows: J Lohr gets an 87 out of 100 while the Sterling gets an 83.
Sterling LCBO Link
J.Lohr LCBO Link
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