Sean Thackrey Pleiades XV Old Vines, $24.00, 14.6% alc.: Dark garnet, fading to pink at the rim, showing spicy, savory red and black berries and currants, shaded with overtones of cola-rock ‘n’ rye-root beer and underscored by some earthy forest floor; as it opens, there’s a nice floral quality to the lovely aromatics that adds to the appeal. Wyncroft wine wizard Jim Lester added impressions of roasted lamb chops, meat fat, subtle dried lavender and a hint of brett (the latter eludes me through the six bottles that we’ve gone through before and since this particular one, but then, tasters often seem to get different impressions from the same selection). Very nice depth, structure and length here, and interestingly, these have shown some minor bottle variation, with one notable exception; that one was clearly inferior to the other five, lacking in depth, body and structure, providing my only reservation in otherwise proclaiming this to be easily best of the last four Pleiades Thackrey has made.
-from Tasting with Jim Lester
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