Lone Wolf a Ripe Red Wine Blend for Meat

I've barely consumed wine the past 2-3 weeks, not to mention writing about grapes. I hope now to be back in the swing of things.

Over the weekend I opened a bottle of Lone Wolf Red Wine from Paso Robles. This blend was a very reasonable $14.99 at Zionsville's Grapevine Cottage.

I'm intriqued by the Paso Robles, Central California Coast area, because I've had few wines from the region. I'll be making a trip there in October and I will be writing about it.

Until then I picked up this blend on the Grapevine Cottage folks' recommendation. It's a blend of Cabernet and Zin (40 percent each) along with Grenache and Syrah (10 percent each). It spent time in oak and that shows through on the palate. The alcohol tasted hotter than the listed 14.5 percent.

On the palate it was a full-bodied, jammy wine. Think ripe dark fruit with tannins and you have this one. The wine needed decanting when I first opened it and was better the second night.

It was a bit too fruit forward for my tastes. I like big, bold wines but this one just tried to hard. If you like Australian Shiraz, to use the stereotypical example, you'd probably like this wine.

But it was my first try at Grey Wolf Cellars' wines and I'm anxious to try more.

The wine wasn't bad with a grilled bone-in ribeye, but not the balance I expected. It was good enough I want to try more, but not good enough to bring raves!

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