Tasting - Walking Dead Blood Red Blend

Name: Walking Dead Blood Red Blend

Variety: Red Blend (Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Petit Verdot) 
Region: Napa, CA
Country: United States
Year: 2015
Price: $15.29

Winery Review: A wine to sink your teeth into, The Walking Dead Blood Red Blend drops with intense, bold flavor. The wine opens with an inviting nose of raspberries, cranberry cherry and melted milk chocolate. The wine is robust with unyielding character, notes of ripe mixed berry, mocha and toasted spice which flesh out the structured tannins. The we ilintegrated oak offers a warm vanilla note and lead to a long-lasting finish with balanced acidity.

My Review: This week was full of fun with the bottles. This was another one of the living labels bottles, much like that of 19 Crimes. If you download the app on your phone, you can see the bottle come to life. The walking dead ones are particularly fun because the characters come off the bottles and fight the zombies. And if you have more than one bottle, they create a whole scene. Again, I bought this bottle just based off how it looked and had no idea what to expect.

When I opened the bottle I smelled strawberries, raspberries and something similar to grass. When I poured it into the glass it was almost translucent and pink in color. I thought that was a bit strange that it seemed so watery. On initial sample, it started off very sweet, but then finished very root based, grassy and left an unpleasant film on my teeth. Much like drinking a Cocoa-Cola and that weird gritty feeling like your teeth are going to fall out.

The next day it got a lot better. After letting it sit out overnight on the counter, all the bitterness had calmed itself down and what was left was mainly sweet. It wasn't bad. At this time, I just had a small sample by itself. I didn't pair it with anything.

Two days after that....well.....it left much to be desired. I think this is one of those wines you need to drink fairly quickly after opening. I think that at this point it had been open too long. It had a strong taste of vinegar to it. It still smelled of strawberries and raspberries; light and crisp. I was hoping the weird sticky teeth film would go away, but alas that hung on. 

I tried it with cheese and it didn't really taste all the great. I also tried it with a honeycrisp apple. This seemed to help the flavor a bit and bring out the sweeter notes, but again, I think it was past it's prime. 

I think had I consumed more of it in that 24-hour window period it would have been great. I was kind of disappointed that I let this one get away. I will try it again at a later time because I think there was real promise in this one.