Opened from 750ml bottle, acquired from Robert's Market in Woodside at $26usd. As expected, cork was pretty much pristine, and came out easily. Decanted and let sit an hour. Deep, inky purple. Pretty solid color to the rim. Relatively long & lasting legs.
1 Hour: Noticeably missing the raisins and prunes from the nose. Very fruit forward aroma, no really noticeable heat. It has a very deep flavor of cherries, with a hint of spice at the end, cinnamon, maybe. Some ripe plum flavor, medium long finish with some good tooth-coating tannins coming through. It does not have the "thickness" on the tongue that you would expect of a VP, but I would guess that's due to it's being an infant (youngest VP I've ever had, though I have, admittedly, had very few VP's!!) Very youthful and vibrant wine, with all of the fruit that you would expect of one so young. I suspect this will improve a bit with time, but doubt it will develop the body and viscosity of a higher quality VP. Nonetheless, this is very enjoyable, and different than the LBV's I have had in a similar price range -- maybe heavier?
2 Hours: (Tannins) fruit has migrated in a blueberry direction (tannins), still a reasonably long burst of fruit (tannins), nice medium-long finish (tannins), with just a slight hint of heat(tannins.) Did I mention tannins? I think they are dominating about now.....
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