Last night, I had decanted an 05 Bordeaux I had wanted to try but which was still so grapey at dinner time neither of us would touch it, so I pulled this bottle of British Columbian cab franc out of the cellar to accompany beef stroganoff pumped full of fresh herbs: parsley, oregano, thyme and rosemary. This wine is typical of Burrowing Owl's signature muscular, big-oak style, and in fact at first taste all you taste is wood. The wine seems fruitless until you stick a bite of food in your mouth. Then it's full of complex sweet black fruit, blackberry and black currant the most prevalent here, and lots of savory notes including all the herbs in our dish. A second sip shows less, and the sip after that is again fruitless and woody. The wine seems tired. But then a new bite of food brings it all back.
I have no idea where it's headed from here, but if I were a betting woman I'd bet on it having peaked. Anyone else have one of these lately? Bill?