Her Indoors was in Auckland recently and shopped relentlessly in Smith and Caughey's one of the very few remaining department stores in the country.
Sadly, this too has suffered the decline that retail, especially top end retail has experienced over the last few decades.
Once known for its fabulous window displays, the store now struggles to attract interest.
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Inside the store the departments have been downsized and the 'magic' has gone. The same happened long ago with James Smith's and DIC in Wellington and more recently with Wellington's Kirkcaldie & Stains and Christchurch's Ballantyne's.
Anyway, amongst her purchases she bought 6 bottles of Francis Coppola Zinfandel 2020.
We are familiar with the brand and the wine style.
We spent some time in the Napa Valley in the early 1990s and Niebaum Coppola was one of the magnificent wineries we visited.
The wines were great and we purchased some top cabernet sauvignon and a couple of wine glasses (the ones in the photograph with Francis Coppola Zinfandel above) which we miraculously got home unbroken.
When Her Indoors was working out of Wellington in 2020 she bought a bottle, probably 2017 vintage of this and we shared it with Richard and Shelley and their Italian visitor at dinner in the Egmont Street apartment.
The 2020 zinfandel we tried last night is again rich, medium bodied with fruity and spicy fruit and nice toasty oak flavours. Yummy now and will keep well. The petite syrah in the mix is evident and gives a nice backbone to the more luscious Zinfandel fruit.
I've given up drinking big rich red wines like shiraz, cabernet Sauvignon and zinfandel because I find that after two glasses I don't sleep very well. I might have to reconsider that after tasting this wine last night.
2 comments:
What are you, my mother?
My mother would have said, "Robert's becoming a bit of a crank!"
Richard (of Crank Valley)
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