Monticello Vineyards 2005 Napa Valley Oak Knoll District Merlot Estate Grown Corley Family

I aerated this vigorously and let it then rest for about two hours before drinking.

Dark ruby color.

Oak / berry / cherry smell.

Cherry / berry flavors, juicy, delicious. Oak is always noticeable but does not dominate.

Good bottle for $29.99, matches nicely with steak and vegetables (with rice.)

I enjoyed Sideways well enough but am not convinced that it has any opinions worth basing my life on or otherwise following).

Micheal Pozzan 2007 Napa Valley Pinot Noir

Very dark garnet color, transparent under strong light.

Ripe blackberry smell, blueberry, wet leather.

Blackberry, strawberry, cherry flavors, a bit of chocolate at the end. Restrained oak.

Full-bodied wine, powerful but well-balanced. Good value for $18.99.

Duckhorn Vineyards 2008 Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc

Extremely pale straw color, just the slightest tinge of green. Some petillance on the opened bottle and on the glass.

Fresh melon smell, lemon and lime, toast.

Dry citrus fruit, melon,

Good bottle for $28.99, tart refreshing acid that cries out for full-flavored food.

Monticello Vineyards 2005 Napa Valley, Corley Family Syrah, Estate Grown, Signature Collection

Dark garnet color.

Prune and leather smells, floral notes in the background.

Warm dark stone fruit flavors, a bit bitter in the middle, gets a little thin at the end. Very good acid throughout, not always true of 100% Syrah so I suspect a little bit of high acid wine like Viognier in the blend, a good thing if true.

A "mixed message" sort of bottle for $23.99: a big flavorful mouthful at the start that tails away to an inadequate end.

Caporale 1986 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

An odd orphan I found downstairs this week. I'd have guessed there were no more bottles I didn't know about down there.

I admit during the years in the basement this bottle lost its price label, so I'm only guessing it was under $20. I suspect it doesn't matter, really: I see no evidence in Google that Caporale wine is currently available outside the winery.

Because the wine has developed a significant amount of sediment and because the cork crumbled some while being extracted, I put this through a paper coffee filter.

Clear dark ruby with the sediment filtered out.

Unpleasant over-ripe fruit salad smell which doesn't seem to blow off after half an hour. Under the stink there are smells of currant, black cherry, plum.

Ripe stone fruit flavor, the fruit-salad-gone-bad is here, too.

The next day the smell and taste haven't improved. This isn't quite like anything I've encountered before in wine. I hesitated before posting it, but I think this has been like this since the day it was bottled, and is not some product of spoilage. My experience with too-old wine is that it just loses flavor, not that it develops weird bad ones.

If I found another bottle I'd open it, to see if it is this distasteful.