Back in September we attended the Newport Mansions Food and Wine Festival with some friends. On that day we all agreed that the wine of the event was the 2009 Justin Isosceles. It was a luxurious, mouth coating effort with vibrant fruits and a very long finish. We even went back and had a second taste later in the day. You could tell it was popular, as the representative from Justin had to go and buy more from a local shop when they poured through theirs within about two hours. I’m not sure how they were going to get through the second day.
Anyway, we loved it so much we bought a couple of bottles, finding it on sale at $47. This is at the top of our price range, and falls in our Special Occasion category. It seemed worth it though. To be sure, we had the same friends over for dinner on Friday night and we opened a bottle of the Isosceles just to make sure we still all agreed about it.
We did agree. To try and replicate the air exposure that the bottles at the wine tasting experienced we decanted this about 45 minutes. At the tasting the bottle is open for a while and is constantly turned up and down, mixing the wine and maximizing air exposure in the bottle. The 45 minutes turned out to be a good time, as the wine was spectacular.
Here are the original wine tasting notes from the September event:
“Overall Impression and comments: OK – this is good stuff. Full bodied, great black and red fruits coming through. The tannins are there but smooth. Really outstanding. The unanimous choice of four of us for the wine of the event, at least of those we tried.”
After trying it again I have nothing to dispute with that original evaluation. About the only thing that was different was it tasted probably even better than I remembered it. This is great stuff, and well worth the money if you can afford a $50 bottle for a special occasion. I wish we could drink it more often.
Something that really highlighted the quality of the Isosceles was that we opened a bottle of the 2007 Titolo Aglianico del Vulture right behind it, which we have reviewed previously here. This is a wine we love, and which retails in the same general range as the Isosceles (although we got the Aglianico for $20 – a great deal). The Isosceles has it all over the Titolo. One is really good, one is great. Tasting a very good wine next to the offering from Justin really highlighted it. It is outstanding. We highly recommend the 2009 Isosceles.
A votre sante!
Leave a Reply