The 2021 Bally Keal Estate Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon from Fairfield, CA comes in with a back label that actually tries to be helpful—refreshing. It gives a nice, brief description and even tells you the exact vineyard source: “Block A, 6.9 acres of Clone 337.” I don’t know about you, but that sounds less like a vineyard and more like something you’d hear whispered during a tour of a special “farm”. I half expected the next line to say, “Ask for Dave behind the barn.”
First taste? Hmm. Flavor was good. But then came the fizz. Not bubbles like champagne, not a little sparkle you are happy to discover. No, this was strange fizzy feeling in the wine. I take another sip, because perhaps my mouth is having some kind of disagreement with reality. Same thing. Fizzy. Hmm.
Now I am thinking maybe bad bottle. This happens. Wine bottles, like people, sometimes have one bad apple among them. So I open my second bottle. Surely this one will be better. Uh-oh. Same fizzy taste. We have problem. The wine itself did not taste bad if you could get past the fizzies. And believe me, I tried. I gave it fair chance. I drank more, because this is serious research and somebody must do it. But every time, that little fizzy sensation was there, reminding me that something was not quite right.
So what to do? Normally, I would forgive a lot if the wine tastes good. But this time, I could not get past it. Maybe I received two strange bottles, maybe the wine is supposed to have this character, but either way, my mouth has voted. Pass.
