2014 Bartholemew Rose of Carmenere, Washington
BORing. Bland pink wine with no distinguishing charcteristics but more sweetness than we find useful or amusing.
2014 Podere Ruggieri Corsini Rosato, Langue
What a sea-change from the previous night's wine. Nose of bay leaf and spice, peach on the palate, dry and toned. Outstanding for $15 locally. Buy again, definitely.
2006 Ravenswood Pickberry, Sonoma
Not as good as the last bottle a year ago, seemingly on the downhill side of its arc. Drinkable but somewhat muddled, but there's no distinct varietal character or interesting secondary complexity of the type that typically brings satisfaction.
2011 Cameron Hughes 373 'Meritage'
I have only had a few CH wines, mostly a glass here or there provided by my neighbor who's a fan and buys direct from the CH website. This is the first whole bottle I've ever dealt with. This wine had three principal flavors: blackberry, green bell pepper and sugar. That is, there's an overriding sweetness here that tells the opposite story of that green bell pepper and is most likely the result of chaptalization. But to assure ourselves we weren't nuts, we tried a frosted animal cookie with the wine and bingo, you could go back and forth from cookie to wine without penalty. In fact, the wine tasted best AFTER the cookie bite because it lifted that veil of sugar off the wine. Don't know if this is the standard CH profile or not.