United States of Wine

Harvest Ridge Winery – 2019 – Cabernet Sauvignon – American

Purchased: Total Wine

Price: $24.99

Driving through Wilmington last week for a college football game, I figured it was a good place to try to find a Delaware-made wine. Delaware is a small state so there weren’t a lot of wineries to choose from, and they’re mostly further away from the main city.

I managed to find Harvest Ridge’s 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon on the back shelf of a local Total Wine, sitting next to some questionable fruit wines and bottled sangria. It didn’t lend for a lot faith in this vintage from the First State’s Kent County.

Opening the wine revealed a scent of a delicate Spanish red wine. It was followed by a light flavor in the first taste, like a garnacha wine. But there was an added flavor that hit my tongue as soon as the wine was sipped. I had difficult time placing the strange flavor, which was off-putting, but would immediately go away. After that initial front taste, the wine was good, but it too bothersome to really enjoy the wine.

We threw around ideas of what the initial taste was, though it reminded me of plastic jugs, like how distilled water from a gallon plastic jug tastes like. Finally it occurred to us: Magic Marker – which isn’t as good as Magic Mike.

After waiting 30 minutes, the Magic Marker taste had not gone away, but the wine flavor afterward was getting more pleasant, so we decided to give it more time to breathe.

It was an hour after we opened this 2019 bottle of Harvest Ridge Cabernet that the plastic marker taste finally faded. What sat in our glass was now a buttery burgundy-colored wine. The front taste was now more like apple peels, slightly tangy, but very pleasant. The apple-fruit flavor could be tasted with each sip, allowing us to enjoy this wine.

We decided that we would definitely drink this wine again, despite the price, which is higher than an average bottle of Spanish garnacha wine. The Harvest Ridge cabernet would make a great lunch wine, or an anytime wine without food. But it’s major issue is how long we had to wait for the wine to finally get rid of that Magic Marker taste. Wherever the wine or grapes sit in plastic at the winery may be affecting the taste a little too much.

Score: 8.0/10