Hauteville Grand Vinde
I’ve been terribly neglectful about both having and writing about the Hauteville Grand Vinde. This was a gift from a colleague last summer and we just opened it a few weeks ago. Gozo is one of the islands that make up Malta and is apparently known for being the most fertile climate in Malta and some of the best Maltese vineyards are located on this island. My colleagues lived in Malta for a while and told me that what she learned there is that, when speaking about wine, that you can’t just say ‘Maltese’ wine, you have to identify with the specific island. So this Hauteville Grande Vinde is a Gozoten wine.
The Hauteville Grande Vinde is a 2014 Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon blend. It was a really pretty brilliant, ruby red in the glass; not at all opaque. I found the nose very interesting as usually the fist, and sometimes only thing I can detect is fruit but with this wine I hard a hard time catching any fruit scents under some really overwhelming green peppercorn, leather, and spice.
On the palate the Hauteville Grand Vinde was very tart. While I wasn’t getting a lot of fruit in the nose here I got a lot of sour cherry with low tannins, and highish acid. For a Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon blend there wasn’t a great deal of substance to the mouth feel and while the flavor was nice it was rather too tart for my liking. I think with the right food to balance the dominant sour cherry flavor this would be quite nice.
For my first foray into Maltese wines this wasn’t too bad; and definitely leaves me wanting to try more!