2007 Corliss Red Blend, WA
Corliss, for the unfamiliar, which most of you will and should be, is a producer of high end Washington reds. I had never heard of them before their 2006 Cabernet was released to much fanfare, prompting even the most experienced WA wine person I know to call it the best WA cab he'd ever tasted. At $82 I didn't stock up, but I did buy one bottle just to find out what everybody was talking about (it deserved the praise) and a year or three later jumped when I had the chance to buy a six pack of their '07 Bordeaux blend at a relatively steep discount, about $48, sight unseen.
I should have done more homework. It was huge: robustly full flavored and muscular. Sylvester Stallone in a bottle. Over the top in nearly every way including alcohol (15%), though not entirely without elegance. This wine in fact reminded me of what Parker was talking about in the famous rant that produced the term AFWE, *this* is the kind of wine he was saying we should all want. But it's not my thing, and it's hard to pair with the kind of food we normally eat.
So it was exactly the wine to take to a local restaurant for their last Smoked Brisket Wednesday of the summer, the season set to end the next day with a 20 degree drop in temperature and rain, to share with friends who are impervious to high abv's. They all swooned over the blackberries and blueberry pie fruits balanced on the savory side by rusty minerality, sarsparilla, bacon, and a pleasantly sweet/sharp/earthy note not unlike parsnip puree. Acidity and tannins are just what you'd hope for. But there was an overarching jammy ripeness here no one but me noticed or minded, which I believe will integrate with tertiary notes after a few more years on its side. I'll leave my remaining two alone.