2005 Casillero del Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon, ChileIt’s past time that I update a few TJ’s faves. This blog has been around for about a year now, and naturally many of the wines reviewed have been replaced with new vintages on the shelves at your local Trader Joes.

I know that for some readers of this blog, vintage seems like a trivial concern. How much different can the 2004 and the 2005 of a certain wine be? When it comes to large-tank producers, that’s a good point. Winemakers strive for consistency year-to-year, and may even blend some wine between vintages to achieve it. You can make a case that non-vintage is the way to go at some price points, in order to achieve uniform quantity. OTH, weather and other factors can cause huge differences between vintages - and sometimes even between tanks. There was a story not too long ago in the L.A. Times ( I think) about two-buck-chuck aficionados being so attuned to the variable quality of each tankfull of the swill, that they would buy one bottle, taste it in the parking lot, and come back for more if it passed muster. And think about it — it’s an amazing technical achievement to make the entire run of a 50,000 case wine, coming as it does from thousands of different barrels - all taste the same. It’s not like there is one big tank you can use to blend wine all that stuff.

BTW -sometimes, I really wonder. Not that long ago, I heard one winemaker jokingly tell another how simple it would be to swap the 2000 labels on several barrels of Napa Valley Cabernet with 2001 labels. Now this was clearly a joke, but the best jokes start with a grain of truth, don’t they?

The 2005 Casillero Cabernet is decent, if unexciting. The nose features redwood chips, cassis, & blackberry pie. The wine is simple and juicy in the mouth but a touch astringent, leading to a clean, dry finish.

I don’t have a bottle of 2004 laying around to compare it with, but my feeling is that the 04 was a little brighter and more polished than the 05. Still, this is a solid value from a reliable producer.