As I have stated several times to people my taste have changed over the past several years as I have moved over to the “Dry side” of wine. I have really expanded in drinking more red wine these days and, even better, drinking more wines along the dry+bold red spectrum. If you knew me 3 or even 4 years ago you would most likely say “Not Dave Potter”. Well, it’s true and it is really hard when doing tastings at a winery not to turn the nose up to that sweet tasting wine of my past. I find that I even tease my friends, like Jeff Cope from TxWinelover, about their drinking sweet wine; even Jeff’s taste has changed.
This week I saw a post from my friend, Russell Kane from VintageTexas, that he was drinking a “Sweet Tempranillo” from Cap Rock Winery. Surely that was not Russ talking! This is the man and the reason that started my blogging about Texas wine and really learning as much as I can about Texas wine, and wine in general. So I decided on my New Year’s vacation week to make another trip into town to find this wine of which he spoke. I was staying at my in-law’s house about 20+ min outside of Bastrop, TX. Luckily they have a Spec’s in town with a fairly good wine selection and a fairly good Texas wine selection. While making a few runs around town for my mother in law and wife I stopped at Spec’s for the second time this week and there on the shelf was the last bottle of Cap Rock Sweet Tempranillo. Yes! The spot light beamed down from above and zeroed in on the very LAST bottle. As I grabbed the bottle from the shelf the manager walked over and said that is a good tasting wine, we can’t keep it on the shelf. OK Russ you win on round one!
After getting home from our trip at last, tonight we started off our first Texas wine blog of 2013 with the Cap Rock 2011 Sweet Tempranillo. I was on a Tempranillo kick last year and looks like I am starting off where I left off. As I poured the three ounces to start off our tasting of the wine we found the color was of good clarity giving off a nice dark ruby color. Off the top on the nose we got the aroma of dark cherries, raspberry and plums. From the taste we got ripe dark fruits, berries and current along with hints of floral like rose. 
The wine comes across jammy and not earthy at all. This Tempranillo is a contrast to typical Tempranillo’s we have tried and this wine is far from the name Sweet Tempranillo. In reality we found this version to be rather fruit forward where a traditional Tempranillo is more on the earthy side with less fruit forwardness. This is an easy drinking wine that would satisfy wine lovers on both ends of the sweet-dry spectrum. This wine is a great purchase at under $11.
