I know I’ve said this before, but every single time I think of this winery, Lambert the Sheepish Lion, a cartoon from my childhood, pops into my head and I spend the rest of the day singing the Lambert song to myself. Yep, there is goes again, now it will be stuck in my head all day! Anyway, I chose the 2004 Lambert Bridge Merlot the other night. We drank it with our Easter dinner (this review is slightly tardy due to our vacation) of steak over risotto with raspberry/wine reduction sauce. We left for our vacation the day after Easter, so we didn’t want to make a ham or anything that would have leftovers…so we had steak instead! We purchased this wine at the winery on last year’s Sonoma trip for $40, it had a real cork closure, and clocked in at 14.1 percent alcohol by volume.
My first thought about this wine: it smells like raspberry jam. Perhaps I was influenced by the raspberry jam I used in the reduction sauce, but I really don’t think so as I hadn’t yet opened the jam when I opened and started taking notes on the wine! I also found strawberry, plum, spice, pepper, black fruit, and some slight oak on the nose. Overall, a very fruity nose. In the mouth I got pepper, plums, strawberry, spice, black cherry, herbs, licorice, and blueberry.
Overall, probably not the best match ever with the steaks, but the wine is smooth and ready to drink. Get to it if you have a bottle! Both Matt and I really enjoyed this wine, both when we tasted it at the winery and when we finally popped the cork on the bottle.
Filed under: California, Merlot, Wine | 3 Comments »
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