#27 - Norton

Varietal: Norton
Wine: Norton
Label: Horton Vineyards
Region: Virginia
Year: 2005
Date Tasted: April 2010

Notes: This wine is one of the more interesting wines I have tasted. The wine is a full bodied red, and dry, but with several small spikes of sweet that flit and dance about, teasing you to find them, then disappearing again. I found myself aerating and circulating this wine in my mouth as I tried to identify and catch these flavors, and even - to the dismay, I am sure, of wine tasting purists - returning the wine to the front of my tongue to try to find them.

I found notes of plum, cherry, chili, and ahi, with a very savory finish. This wine could readily be used as a spunky substitute for a full cabernet sauvignon. We paired it with a grass-fed steak, and the leaner (non-corn) meat worked very well with the complexities of this wine.

As a caution, the Norton may be too intense to drink without a solid meat meal, or at least a hearty chocolate dessert to follow it up. This wine should not be overchilled, lest the characteristic full-with-light and dry-with-almost-sweet notes be depressed. Also, you will want to open this bottle when you can finish it the same day, as the flavor goes south much more quickly than most other wines.