Drink Colorado wine

Two Rivers Vineyard and Chateau is the type of winery we really love to get behind. Featuring a beautiful inn on its Grand Junction property and affordable, tasty wines, it celebrates the local industry wonderfully. A visit to the 15-acre vineyard with sweeping views of the surrounding mesas will transform you.

While a solid bottle, its 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon doesn’t quite cause the same breathtaking reaction.

This cab is a respectable wine that comes in at less than $20. Its nose is filled with pleasant aromas of blackberries, the forest after a nice rain storm and a powerful hint of hot booze. On the tongue, this cab is dry, a little rough and astringent. It needs room to breath to let those tannins mellow. When it does, it becomes nice to serve with your medium rare steak or to enjoy on a chilly evening.

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It’s full and powerful with strong smoke and spice flavors, although it falls a little short in complexity, with an aftertaste that feels, and falls, flat, not quite matching up to a great California cabernet.

But not every wine needs to be perfect, and there is plenty of room in this world for good wines that will warm the mouths and bellies of everyone at the table. But I suspect this wine would taste absolutely fantastic sitting on the patio of the Two Rivers Inn some evening overlooking the Grand Valley vineyard in Colorado’s beautiful Western Slope with the sun setting in the distance.

Atmosphere, after all, can be equally as powerful as complex flavors.

For more:

2006 Cabernet Sauvignon by Two Rivers Winery and Chateau in Grand Junction
14.2% alcohol by volume
Grapes from the Grand Valley AVA
Price: $20
6.5 stars on ColoradoWino.com's completely arbitrary 11-star wine review rating system

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