Ratings
All of these ratings are my personal opinions, and while I've had some of these wines multiple times, at other times I've had just a single tasting. You may disagree with these ratings, or you may find that the bottle you purchase doesn't meet your expectations. This is the nature of wine, which remains an art rather than a science. And of course everyone's taste is different.
I rate the wine on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest). I have reserved a rating of 0 to wines that are unpalatable when I am unable to resolve to my satisfaction that the problem is a corked bottle rather than an error at the winery. A few wine have no rating at all; these are wines that I was unable to judge.
Ratings provide a guideline, not a guarantee; each vintage and each bottle is different. The other day I poured a bottle wine down the sink; this was a wine I usually like, and in fact I still recommend that wine, but this particular bottle was bad. A bottle will go bad, either because of a mistake by the winery, improper handling in shipment, or neglect by the wine merchant. In at least one case, I've seen a wine ruined by its success: one year the wine was excellent and the next year the winery overproduced the wine to meet demand.
Finally, I'd like to paraphrase the Wall Street Journal's wine reviewers, Gaiter and Brecher, who said something very important. If you find a wine that's inexpensive that you enjoy, this doesn't mean you have poor taste — this means you've found a bargain. It's your and your friends' enjoyment of the wine that's important, not what I or anyone else thinks of the wine.
2007 Red C
This is the 2007 vintage second wine of Covenant Winery from Napa Valley. It is Cabernet Sauvignon within the California varietal restrictions (at least 75% of the stated Varietal). The wine itself had little nose and a fairly monolithic and simple fruit. There was very little complexity of flavors and a relatively fat fruity sweetness to the approach. Tannins were fairly mild, in fact much more so than I would have expected from a Napa Valley Cab. The color was a the deep red I would expect. In all, poor with food and not particularly attractive as an appertif.
In all I was very disappointed in this wine. Covenant has a fine reputation as a first quality wine producer. I was expecting strong cassis flavors from the Rudd vineyard but got none of that. I'm not sure where the grapes in Red C originated but they certainly had no distinctive flavors and tasted of young and valley floor vines.
The wine is not offensive but, then, is also not particularly good. Normally I would rate this wine at around 2.5 out of 5 but with a retail price point north of $40 I simply can't recommend this wine under any circumstances.