2020 Stratus Red, White Label

"...I will just say this off the top, this is the finest red wine I have ever tasted from Niagara and hence the highest scoring wine I have awarded. It’s a Left Bank looking blend, but really sits somewhere between the Medoc and Napa Valley, combining the power of Napa and the grace of Bordeaux, and capitalizing on Niagara’s most inspiring red vintage since the modern-day wine industry began in the region. Comparisons to other regions seem lame, but this is a wine priced to draw those comparisons, and consumers will. In reality, it’s a 100% Niagara tour de force that has been decades in the making.

From the first impression of dreamy, perfumed notes, you are drawn into this wine on the nose and beyond. It’s profoundly fruited with black currants, dark cherries, blackberries, and plums followed by foraged truffles, forest floor, savoury dried herbs, earthy notes, leather, graphite, and enticing spices notes that are elegant and persistent. It opens on the palate to firm, chewy tannins in support of a rich, luxuriously textured array of dense dark berries, damson plums, cherry/kirsch, dried tobacco, herbs, underlying earthy/savoury notes and gorgeous toasty, vanilla-tinged, elegant spices all leading to an echoing, velvety smooth and finessed finish that seems to last for minutes. This blockbuster, highly structured red is the epitome of grace and power and has what Groux calls a drinking window that can improve for three decades. He could be right, but I would safely suggest 15+ years, based on some of the greatest older Niagara reds I have tasted in the past. 97 points, Rick Vansickle, Wines In Niagara