Last week I wrote about the Gush Etzion Winery, and about how much I liked many of the wines at the Sommelier wine tasting. I was therefore excited to taste the 2006 Gush Etzion Cabernet-Merlot, which is one of the older vintages that is now available in the US.

Unfortunately, the wine did not live up to its hype. The wine started off in a crazy haze of madness and funk, with heavy astringency, aromas of funk, flavors going in all directions, and an overall mess. The wine did start to come out of its haze, but in the end, it took some 12 or more hours to reach a state of what I can only call “B++”, but there is no way I can score this wine. The amount of time I was willing to wait for this wine to come around, is not reasonable, and in the end, the wine’s weird salt and astringency is not really scoreable.

This bottle may well have been a bad one, but I have zero interest in finding and tasting another one for now. What I would recommend, if you want to taste this wine, is to buy it from a reputable merchant, who knows you and is willing to accept the wine back if you find it our of whack as I did.

My “wine note” follows below:

2006 Gush Etzion Cabernet-Merlot – Score: (nice wine but flawed) N/A
This wine starts off VERY wrong with massive funk and things going in all directions, bad astringency, and nothing good. Things get better as the wine opens, and finally get really good at the end, but maybe this was a bad bottle or the wine is going – either way not a wine I can score well. My notes are really from the end flavors and aromas, but that is highly unreasonable for a person to wait as long as I did. I would make sure to buy the wine from a reputable merchant who will accept the return if the bottle is bad.

The nose on this vibrant purple colored wine has now calmed from its madness with rich blackberry, black cherry, blackcurrant, rich espresso, chocolate, light tobacco, anise, spice, oak, green notes, and pencil shavings. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is rich and mouth coating with mouth coating tannin, along with what I can only define as a shot of sea salt, rich black fruit, and cedar all finally coming together to make a nice mouth. The finish is long and salty with blackberry, black currant showing strong with layers of rich tannin, cedar, and espresso coffee to finish it off.

This is a nice wine and a shame that it was incoherent to start – be careful and you may well be rewarded with a lovely wine.