#367 Meerlust Estate Red Blend 2020
VIDEO CHAPTER INDEX:
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00:00 – General Wine Rule 38b
01:12 – xx
02:21 – xx
05:30 – The History of the Meerlust Rubicon
07:20 – How is the Meerlust Estate Red different to the Meerlust Rubicon
08:04 – Meerlust Estate Red 2020 Tasting Notes
01:12 – xx
02:21 – xx
05:30 – The History of the Meerlust Rubicon
07:20 – How is the Meerlust Estate Red different to the Meerlust Rubicon
08:04 – Meerlust Estate Red 2020 Tasting Notes
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Some facts about the Meerlust Rubicon
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The Meerlust Rubicon was the first Bordeaux Blend ever to be bottled in South Africa. Remarkably recently, I might add.
It was the now legendary Stellenbosch winemaker Giorgio dalla Cia who blended the first experimental Rubicon in 1978, with the first official release coming with the 1980 vintage.
The then owner, Nico Myburgh had an incredibly grand vision for Rubicon and what it represented to Stellenbosch wine at large, and so, when the 1985 vintage came along, he felt that the quality of the vintage just wasn’t great enough to bear the label of Rubicon. Thus, Giorgio and Nico devised a plan to bottle the 1985 Rubicon as the Meerlust Red, instead.
For those of you who love wine trivia, or perhaps hunting for wine oddeties, these “declassified rubicons” have only been released five times – 1990, 2002, 2011 and 2019.
So if you stumble across these little gems, what you essentially getting is the same old Rubicon vineyards, but slightly grumpier weather.
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If you have yet to sign up for your Monthly HanDrinksSolo Wine Subscription then you’ll have to hunt this wine down in your own time. But until then, here are my tasting notes & technical specs:
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TASTING NOTES
👃🏼
The Rubicon Red is a Merlot-driven blend, and the nose shows this quite beautifully:
There some lovely herbal notes
sweet basil,
menthol,
fennel,
and savoury mushroom,
And these act as lovely complicators over the more primary red cherry fruit and fresh blackcurrant.
👄 The palate leads with very elegant red cherry acidity, softened by sweeter notes of cherry candy and blackcurrant fruit. Interestingly, this wine relies far more on elegance than power, with the juicy berry fruit, and slightly moodier herbal notes driving the wine.
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TECHNICAL SPECS
🔬 Wine of origin Stellenbosch. 32% Merlot, 31% Cabernet Franc, 29% Cabernet Sauvignon and 8% Petit Verdot.
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