From the Cellar
D'Alessandro 2003 Il Bosco - Cortona Syrah (Italy)
03 Aug 2021- Details
- Category: Uncorked Tonight
(January 1, 2021) ... First bottle of the new year, if you don't count the bubbles I had at midnight ... I had written an article about Cortona Syrah a few years back for Quench magazine, so now I was interested to see how these wonderful wines age.
This bottle started with lots of dark fruit and spice, and still shows a nice vibrancy and liveliness - I then decided to try a little experiment with this. I noticed that at room temperature it was fairly muted, but not unattractive, showing notes of cassis, blackberry, smoky, and white pepper; there's even a nice dustiness to the finish - but here's where the experiment comes in, I decided to grab one of my "water wings"-like chilling sleeves to give the bottle a little cool down; the outcome was a palate that came across with more dark fruit character. After about an hour to an hour and a half it dries out considerably, sure there's still a nice dark fruit core, but its back-end has become dusty dry and chalky - but that first hour was a revelation in age-ability of these wines.
