Once again, we have the pleasure of tasting a few of the new releases from Marshall Stuart Fine Wines, along with an older vintage of his amazing 2015 Zinfandel.  Marshall Stuart has been making wines in the Temecula Valley for over 25 years.  His passion for wine making can be found in each and every vintage of wine that he produces.  The delightful wines we sampled were the 2018 Malbec, the 2018 Zinfandel, the 2015 Zinfandel, and the 2016 Petite Sirah.   

The Malbec was very dry with some fine tannins. We got notes of currants, pomegranate, and pepper followed by exceptionally dark chocolate, cocoa liqueur, and coffee.

We had the pleasure of tasting two Zinfandel side by side. The first was an older release from 2015 with a monstrous ABV of 16.3%. Personally, it reminded some of us of an Opolo Mountain Zin. There were pronounced notes of ripe strawberry jam and briar fruit on the palate. Very big with a long finish.

Then we compared this with the new 2018 Zinfandel. At first we didn’t get too much from it and as such we decided to decant for an hour. After an hour this wine was stunning. Very fruit forward with notes of juicy plum and strawberry. The finish was textbook with notes of white and black pepper as well as sweet saddle leather. Tannins were chalky in texture. This wine had all the elements to suggest that you could hold it for awhile.

The fan favorite of the evening was the 2016 Petite Sirah. At first the wine tasted of raisins but it really impressed us as it opened up. True to the varietal, this wine had lovely notes of blackberry, blueberry, pepper, cloves, coffee, and chocolate. The finish was long and led to speculation as to the possibility of eucalyptus trees being near the vineyard as there was definite notes of eucalyptus and menthol in the finish. Absolutely superb.

We did notice some themes over the evening of tasting. All these wines had very high alcohol levels and yet none had any burning sensation to believe that these wines were necessarily out of balance. On the contrary, these wines were very balanced yet very big in flavor and body. Importantly these wines were immensely drinkable. If you haven’t tried Marshall Stuart’s wines yet, we highly recommend you pick up a bottle or twelve for that matter. For information about his wine go to Marshallstuartswines.com