 Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horkey. Hi, I'm Surentime. Welcome back to the show today. We have some wines today from Lake County, California. And I am excited. Maybe you don't know where Lake County is, but you should. And we'll talk to you about it in a little bit. You know, first of all, we have wine from this producer, Hawk and Horse here. We're drinking out of Gabriel Gold glasses. We used our Corvind Model 2 Elite to extract the wines. Let's get into it. Let's go over it. So what you're going to want to know is you have Napa Valley, the world-famous Napa Valley. And that's in Napa County. Just adjacent, just north of that is Lake County. And it's known for, you know, having a similar climate, producing some nice Cabernet Sauvignon. Actually, these wines are from the Red Hills AVA. And why is that significant for us? Because when we visited Napa a few weeks ago, we actually tasted it from a producer from Red Hills, Obsidian Ridge, from Obsidian Wine Company. It was Cabernet Sauvignon 2015 for 30 US dollars. That was a bargain. What did you think about that wine from Obsidian Ridge? Accessible, fresh, excellent price. And it still has that Napa Valley characteristic. It still did. And you know, Obsidian Ridge, we're talking about, we're talking about those, they have vines all the way up to about 2,800 feet, 3,000 feet. So close to 1,000 meters. I know Hawken Horse are close to about 700 meters, 2,000 feet in elevation. Let's get into the sum of the wine, shall we? Let's go for it. Hawken Horse is a biodynamic producer. They farm biodynamically. They are demeanor certified. So you know that they're going to care about the vineyards. You know, we're huge on that. This is the 2013 Red Hills Lake County Cabernet Sauvignon 1500 cases made. You know, I say jokingly that Lake County is the place for bargain Cabernet Sauvignon, but this is 70 US dollars. Well, maybe he's going to move over a lot of value. So 2000, I hope so too. You know, we did a perspective tasting while we were in Napa where we tasted 2013, 14, and 15 Cabernet Sauvignons next to each other. 2013, 2013 is considered to be the vintage of the century at Napa. Those wines still hard, still very structured, not ready to drink. So let's give this a go here, shall we? First of all, dark, inky color on this Cabernet Sauvignon. Great nose, rocking nose. What do you think of that nose? What are you picking up? Let's be a clay nose to it. It's also a little bit floral. I love the floral. Chocolate, sweet cedar you get in there. Definitely a little sweet cedar. But you still get the cabbie flavors, the casus, the black cherry, the caps coming out of yada, yada, yada, but I think I think the old worldiness kind of seduced me in. Oh, black fruit, right? Black fruit to me. It's really nice, right? Ripe. Let's give this a go. I love the tannins. It's a little bit sandy, but it's small and nice. And it gives a good structure, very nice shoulder, broad knit palate. This is really good wine. The tannins are not as hard as other 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon we've had from Napa. And the world of Cabernet Sauvignon, 70 US dollars. I know it's not cheap, but I think this is a good wine for me. So type of wine that's going to get four point three out of five out of me. Easy, ninety two, ninety three plus point wine for critics. You're liking this a lot, right? I like the mental finish as well. Yeah, I'm just getting it's like dark fruit, but it's so fresh at the same time. Is there a style in that I've got an AVA in my head, a style like from Napa, this kind of wine that you think is similar? I can't think of any, a specific AVA, no. The Howell Mountains we tasted to remind me a lot of this. I would think Howell Mountain is bigger and more tannic, not for me. OK, this is clocking in at fourteen point one alcohol. So alcohol is under control. Really good wine. Huck and horse, thanks. Good wine. Anything else you want to say on that? No, I want to drink this. Put it in here, put it in here. So many wines. We're doing three episodes. So many wines and streams. Like, I'm going to drink this later. This is a good wine. The next we have, this is the style of wine that's near and dear to Shirin. This is a port style wine from Huck and Horse. 2012 Red Hills Lake County, Lattigo. This is port style Cabernet Sauvignon. Actually, during the fermentation, they add great brandy so it stops the fermentation. So there's still residual sugar, higher alcohol, 18 degrees of alcohol. This for a half three seven three point, sorry, three hundred seventy five milliliters, so half a regular bottle, 50 US dollars, 18.8 alcohol. Why don't you tell everybody why port style wines are so near and dear to you? Oh, it was the first wine that I had and they drew me in and make me fall in love with wine just from the very first sip when I was a little kid. So this is kind of like a vintage style port, so to speak, a bio dynamic one at that. Let's give this a go. Pretty nice. I would I like about this. I'm not a huge fan of port wine. We were in a porto a couple of years ago. We did. We did some port tastings for me. I like dessert wines a lot. I like sweet ones a lot. But port sometimes the alcohol comes and I burns my nose off and I don't like that so much. This is a ruby pot style. Yeah, even though it's made like a vintage port, quote unquote. Excuse me, I'm gassy today. And this is coming out of here. Yeah, chocolate, sweet cherry, sweet cherry, sweet cedar spices. You're the port. So yeah, I get the cinnamon and the spice. You are the ports now. That's my style. But I mean, spiciness. Are you happy with the nose that you're smiling under? That's I like it a lot. You're more in the port than I am. Let's give this a little bit of a go, shall we? I have a question that I actually don't know. Is this entire AVA volcanic soil? I know there's a lot of volcanic soil in it. Fortified wine, you're going to get the sweetness and get the sweet cherry flavors. It is those are in chocolate. Chocolate's going to pair nice with this. I love the fact that this, the alcohol is not ripping my face off, really. I mean, I what's very important to me is well, I don't drink a lot of pot or sherry anymore. But what's important to me is the acidity. I love, like, I generally, okay, how do I put it? I like sweet wine, but I want it to be fresh as well. So that's what I look for in all pot and fortified wine. And this has beautiful freshness. And this is rich, and this is a wine that is dense. We could age this bad boy, I think, right? I'm going to drink it. For me, it's hard for me to score port wines because I don't love them as much as sherry. But in terms of quality, you obviously feel the quality here. I'm going to say 4.4 out of 5. I think this is pretty darn impressive. I really don't know how to gauge this because this is like, I'm trying, I have a reference of pot and sherry, but this is like silky in the front, but it's not really silky. It has tenons, it's got acidity. It finishes a little bit tight, and it has a little bit of tenons on the finish. I don't know, I like it. If you're there, check it out. We will put their link in the description box. I also put Obsidian Ridge. Those wines are very impressive too. Strong, showing by Hawken Horse. I know they make a reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. I was very happy with this episode, yourself. Very, very much. Oh, you like it a lot. So guys, check out their wines. We like them a lot. And if you like this, wait, you say anything else? No. Okay. 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