Wannabe Wino

*Disclaimer: I received this bottle as a sample from Twisted Oak Winery

Arr me mateys! A little late, but in honor of National Talk Like a Pirate Day (this past Friday) we drank this terrifying looking bottle of wine. The wine is the 2006 Twisted Oak River of Skulls. It's a special allocation only wine available only from Twisted Oak, made of 90% Mourvedre and 10% Syrah. It had a real cork closure, clocked in at 14.9% alcohol by volume, and is running about $29 in the allocation notice I got for being a Twisted Few member, but I'm not sure what it will cost if any is made available to non-Twisted Few members.....

My first thought on sniffing the wine, after sorting through individual aromas, popped into my head as: this smells like blackberries wrapped in leather grilled with baking spice then dusted with star anise. Individually I found blackberries, spice, black cherry, vanilla, earth, baking spice, fresh herbs, plums, tobacco, and something slightly meaty.


In the mouth, I got blackberry, black cherry, black currants, spice, plums, and star anise. The mouth came through as fruitier than the nose (or literally in the nose, as I accidentally put my nose a little too far into the glass and got a snootful!). The fruit showed as tart, like a blackberry plum crumble (I'm sure there isn't such a thing, I'm clearly just making stuff up at this point) with just the slightest hint of sweetness.

Overall, I thought the wine had the tannins to show it through years to come and I will definitely be sitting (figuratively folks!) on my second bottle for a few years to see how this develops. Skulls is dark and brooding and would love to be paired with your next pig roast.