Don’t get taken Prisoner by ‘The Prisoner’

Wine Homework:  2008 Orin Swift ‘The Prisoner’

The wine:  46% Zinfandel,  26% Cabernet Sauvignon,  15% Syrah,  10% Petite Sirah,  2% Charbono,  1% Grenache

Region:  Napa, CA

How I came to drink it:     Everyone, I mean EVERYONE  kept saying, ‘Have you had it?’, ‘It’s the best wine ever!’, ‘Leslee you HAVE to have it!’ – and so, I did. 
When a wine comes so highly recommended (IE: see earlier blog entry with the green MR YUK face), you just can’t help to run out and get it.  But, when I RAN to the shelf to get it, bummer…it was $40.  Ouch, a steep price to pay for wine homework tonite.  Seriously. 
My Tasting Notes:  (Taken right from my book after drinking it in a dark corner of a local restaurant) – Smells of burnt cherry wood, and candied like the chocolates you get for Christmas with the cherries and fake cordial cream centers.  Tastes like dripping black cherries, but it’s over the top.  Creamy blackberries, spice and could remind of you of wandering through a fat brior bush as a kid, but wait…the overwhelming caramel takes over this lovely fruit and kills my drifting childhood memory smells.  All I taste is the burnt, heavy charring, dripping caramel over these lovely boisenberries and blackberries – OAK.  In the nose it becomes more and more apparent.  Hot on the alcohol and abrasively thick now like cough syrup.  Hmmm, not my style. 
My words:  I paid $40 for this?!  Bummer.  If I wanted Chateau 2X4, I would have asked for an over powered Chardonnay.  I’m just not an ‘oak’ person.  It ruins the fruit for me.  My only advice for drinking this, is putting something up food wise that will make friends with the wood.  A heavily charred ribeye perhaps.  Something with grill marks and make ’em deep!  Maybe an sweet onion glaze to go with your steak, now that sounds pretty good with this wine.  See?  Weight for weight, you can always find something to fill in those spots that you’re not fond of, drinking it alone.  It needs a pal, food.
At the end of the day – I’d recommend, the Marietta Old Vine Red – found on the shelf for: $11 and this one comes without the oak. Same style fruit (juicy, fat sassy Zinfandel-y), still grown in CA (Sonoma) and really, really lovely for this style of wine.  $11 versus $40 – buck for buck??
WITHOUT the WOOD!