Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon 2004

Description

Bright youthful, deep brick red colour, attractive primary fruit, violets, toasty oak, leather, chocolate and mulberry. The wine sings with generous primary fruit. On the palate, the generous dark fruit flavours and full body make it almost plump and round, but underneath is a firm but well-integrated tannin structure and toasty, smoky oak in the background. It has good length and finishes with some violet notes.

How does it compare with its recent siblings? At Moss Wood, the 2001 is the current benchmark and maybe the ’04 doesn’t quite reach it. And hard core wine lovers might even prefer the concentration and slumbering intensity of 2003. However, the 2004 has delicious, up-front generosity with complexity, not dissimilar to the 1994 and perhaps may be described as a more complete version of the 2000 (the ultimate user-friendly, gluggable vintage) but more mysterious. An indication of its appeal may be seen by the fact that Keith has taken to calling it "yummy" and we just how great it would have been if Mother Nature had allowed the grapes to sit on the vines for those few extra days of slow ripening. (Wow!)