A lavish attack

Here's the way Staglin Family Vineyard describes its 2006 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon:

The wine opens with an abundant nose of candied cherries and ripe plums complex with notes of cedar and pencil shavings, a whiff of black olives and just the faintest hint of jasmine floating above. A lavish attack on the palate is lead by ripe Satsuma plums and marionberries in an ebullient bath of Maraschino liqueur followed by an uninhibited mid-palate of blackcurrants deepened by notes of leather, loam and rich chocolates that oscillate between milk and dark, girded along the way and through the exit into a lengthy finish by plentiful and luxurious tannins.

Wow. I blogged last week about this study about the language used to describe expensive wines. What a great example. You know that an "ebullient bath of Maraschino liqueur" isn't going to be cheap.

Moreover, if you're on the mailing list and you spend $175 for this bottle of wine, you don't want to be told only that it tastes like cherry and chocolate and it's well-balanced -- even if that description were totally accurate.

I tasted this wine this week and loved it; this was my favorite of a cherry-picked group of '06 Rutherford Cabs. That said, I didn't see any chocolate oscillating. But I gotta say, I love those verbs. I wish I had this description in front of me while drinking the wine. "Hey Wilfred, is your chocolate oscillating?" "No man, I'm still in the ebullient bath."