wines with olive notes?

Cabernet Franc is often described as having green olive notes.

Tom S

Some years ago I bought some Cabernet from the Los Olivos winery -- and it was very similar to the packing juice that you find in a bottle of olives. Actually, it was pretty bad but VERY olive like.

Mike

I had some 1990 Chateau Simard this spring that tasted a lot like olives. But the wine was also an insipid brownish color. I think there was something wrong with it.

Simard is unusual. Someone recently had a thread on "why don't winemakers hold till ready". Well, that's Simard's niche. The 1990 is the current release. Now, some years ('88) the best thing you can say about Simard is that it's old. The '90 seems to exhibit some extreme bottle variation. Interesting reports. One bottle showed very well in a blind '90 horizontal (experienced tasters) against some big boys. They were met w/disbelief, did a retest (also blind). This time there were 2 '90 Simards in the mix, one showing very well, one towards middle-bottom of the pack (still fairly impressive, as the $20-something Simard was against more expensive wines). No one pegged the 2 Simards as the same wine. Meanwhile, here in NY, some bottles were deemed DNPIM (do not put in mouth), others as so-so (that's the one I had), a few good. Even accounting for taster variations, there's obviously some bottle variation there. Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

At our lawyers' monthly wine tasting group, on 11 NOV 2004, all wines were tasted blind. We make our own taste notes, guess the varietal, where it's from, and every once and awhile, the vintage but normally we aren't that good. After an hour or so of swapping stories, gossip, notes, and of course more drinking, we un-bag the bottles.

Glass number 3 I simply wrote "olive and leather". Turned out to be a 2001 Aquila Margaret River, a cabernet sauvignon from Australia, about $20 US. It was my second favorite.

There you go!

Doesn't Sancerre have distinctive olive notes among its herbal nose.

Not really olive=herbal to my nose. But eucalyptus and olive notes are sometimes similar.

Went down to my basement tonight to make a selection and there was the '90 Simard which immediately set off my intrigue after having read this thread. I guess I got one of the good ones, as I'm really enjoying this.

I really like the idea of being able to pick up a mature Bordeaux for $23. Are there other winemakers that hold their wines for years? Is the variation in bottle quality a side effect of this same process? I could believe that a bottle that was poorly sealed would be extra bad when finally released.